Sunday, May 28, 2006

Crowded skies or crowded online travel space?

Following up on my earlier post on online travel space , here is an updated compilation of the travel players who have either launched their offerings or have announced the same.

Operational sites

Indiatimes Travel
MakeMyTrip
Travelguru
Xplorz : (Promoted by Tulip Travels)
Thomas Cook
Mobissimo : Fare search & redirect to airline for booking fulfilment
Rediff Fare Search : Fare search & redirect
Traveljini : Tavel content


Launch announced

Yatra
Cleartrip
Ezeego1 – Cox and Kings, read more
Travelocity India : read more
Sify's acquisition of Globe travels : read more (Updated : 6th June 2006)

This makes it more than a dozen sites already and counting ! Any wagers on who will survive ?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

This list has only one international player travelocity who have recently anounced their plans to enter ndian market through their Asian company -Zuji.

I am sure we can expect Expedia, Priceline etc to also come in.

Anonymous said...

I thought traveljini.com funded by ICICI went under. Its main page was non operational for ages (now I see it operational).

How much money do they recieve for the local flight booking.
In US I think expedia & Travelocity gets $5 flat rate per Domestic flight booking.

Regarding Hotel booking, StayXS has been in existence for years.
In fact, our site http://www.Hotel.co.in is powered by StayXS

Anonymous said...

Success for any player, IMHO, will depend on how comprehensive the listings will be, how 'full-service' the firm will be, and how much of the market will they address. Mobile users included? Offline users included?

The US-based players will definitely enter the Indian market shortly, so expect there to be consolidation pretty soon. Firms like Cleartrip, Travelguru and MakeMyTrip have all raised VC moolah from US-based investors. Look for them to get "biz-dev'd" into an exit soon.

Anonymous said...

what will be interesting to see how many can survive the market .

The domestic airlines are already would rather go direct and offer the price advantage to the end customer .

With the serve shortage of hotel rooms in the country, not much of a play ...

So it will be interesting to see the biz models these guys come up with .

Anonymous said...

Anurag:

Its actually interesting to see the continuous emergence of new players in this space - the wierdest thing is that almost all of them are online travel agents and have little advantage over discount-savvy airlines and other travel providers. I wrote about this sometime back here:

http://blog.indiagoes.com/?p=28

and

http://blog.indiagoes.com/?p=10

Anonymous said...

you would see an entry into this space by Yahoo India very soon ... something of their own or a tie-up...

praneeth said...

Depends on how they deferentiate,build the brand makemytrip doing well in building there brands(there viral campigns are cool)

Anonymous said...

Hi anurag... it seems u have good idea about current education scenario in india and online education growth and development.

I am searching for some facts and figures on online education in india, current players, their geographical spread and other indian education statistics, if u can help me out in this.