Monday, February 5, 2001		Article

Luring NRI’s with attractive packages
By Naveen S.Garewal

THE dot.com bubble might have burst, but it has not brought bad news for all. Barely four months into the market, makemytrip.com, Indian first travel portal, already has its revenues curve on the rise. The portal has placed itself in the niche market of luring the NRI’s back to their motherland in the form of "attractive and affordable packages". The success of the portal lies in the ability to operate in real time.

Started as a joint venture between Soft bank Inc, NewsCorp and Ispat Group, in October last year, the portal has generated a turnover of Rs 23 million from inbound traffic, domestic packages for holiday season and the portals online booking capabilities. Sachin Bhatia, vice-president, marketing, attributes the portal’s success to "being at the right place at the right time coupled with operations that generates customer confidence".

The unique feature of the portal is that it allows online booking and confirmations, round-the-clock customer support, online Web chat and toll free number from 39 cities in the country. "In-bound travellers prefer an agent at the destination rather than the origin. This gives makemytrip the added advantage over other travel agencies", says Bhatia.

Since persons are not very confident with online transaction of money, makemytrip.com couriers the tickets within 24 hours and collects cheques and drafts at the customer’s doorsteps. The portal offers various travel options in flights, hotels, cruises, car rentals and train bookings along with specially created packages for destinations worldwide. The portal also allows making one’s own travel plans, based on the budget and the available time.

Information about travel-related issues like visa, passports, insurance, travel and finance are available on the site itself. Besides, it also offers the option to locate the best fairs available between destinations along with the availability of reservations. The portal has also secured the International Air Transport Association (IATA) accreditation.

The site has sections on travel finance (finance offered by Kotak Mohindra), destination guide, exciting deals, packages, concessions for students, information on insurance and freebies. The site also has exhaustive section on global destinations supported by photographs, intelligent maps and downloadable videos. The information on over 120 destinations is by experienced travel writers and the Lonely Planet, the world’s leading travel guide.

After checking the lowest fare on the site, you can actually find out about the seat availability. Once the transaction has been made, the clients can even communicate with the agency through its round-the-clock chat forum that is available on the site itself. After registration, the clients also get a toll free number that allows them to speak with the portal staff at no cost.

To tap the NRI and international traffic, makemytrip has created a network of offices at New Delhi, Mumbai and New York. Travel is the second largest industry on the Net today with immense potential. Most Indian travel portals like makemytrip.com aim to target major markets in UK, USA and Australia.

Some other Indian portals that provide travel information include Outlook traveller, Travel genie and net2travel, caravantraveltalk.com, info21st.com, coolindia.com.

Makemytrip.com has a 500,000 database on discounted fares that can be searched and accessed through the flight-booking engine. Makemytrip.com claims that it is different from other Indian travel portals as it provides value addition in services like throwing in a free drop and pickup cab for its clients. The portal plans to introduce free of charge individual cab to various destinations in Punjab, according to Bhatia.