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Travel and tourism is one of most promising and mature industry segments in India. Today, it is the second highest foreign exchange earner for India, and the government has given travel and tourism organizations export house status. The buoyancy in the Indian tourism industry can be attributed to several factors.

Firstly, the tremendous growth in the Indian economy has resulted in more disposable income in the hands of the middle class. Secondly, Indias status as an IT hub has been attracting more business travel, and thirdly, the aggressive advertising campaign, Incredible India by the tourism ministry has played a major role in changing the image of India from that of the land of snake charmers to a hot tourist destination, sparking renewed interest among foreign travelers.

Growth Prospects
Within the Asia Pacific region, India surpassed the regional average in terms of growth in foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) and foreign exchange earnings (FEE). While arrivals grew at 14.3%, receipts from tourism increased at 24.3% in 2007. In absolute terms, 5.08 mn foreign tourists visited India and spent $10.73 bn in 2007. The share of tourism to Indias GDP and employment for 2008 have been projected at 6.36% and 10.17% respectively, increasing from 5.83% of the GDP and 8.27% of total employment in 2002-03. According to the World Travel and Tourism Councils (WTTC) 2007 economic research on India, total tourist demand is expected to grow by 7.9% per year in real terms between 2008 and 2017.

According to Dhiren Savla, CIO, Kuoni Travels, today a majority of the domestic travel demand goes through the unorganized sector, and mom-and-pop shops. Over the last few years, with the entry barrier coming down and the online channel playing a major role in the fulfilment of delivery, more and more players are entering the market. Also, the players who are not typically in the tourism segment, such as airlines and hotels, have also started tour operating packages.

Adopting IT
Growing impressively, the online travel industry in India is estimated to be worth $6 bn by 2010. The travel boom, emergence of low-cost carriers, proliferation of the Internet and the growing acceptance of e-commerce over the last few years, are key factors that have contributed to the emergence of this sector as a formidable force in the overall travel industry. According to industry estimates, it is expected to corner around 23% share of the total travel market by 2010.

As the industry leader, MakeMyTrip has pioneered technological advances in this sector and is constantly innovating using its website interface. From being the first online travel portal to providing real-time hotel bookings in India, access to the website, payment through mobile phones, and now a first-of-its-kind search matrix that enables effective hotel search, it has employed technology to enhance customer experience using the website. We value-add to the users experience using Web 2.0. For example, we have illustrated the hotels section with comprehensive staff-undertaken hotel reviews. Further, it includes mapping of hotel locations with reference to the city center, and major local attractions, says Deep Kalra, CEO, MakeMyTrip.com.

This year MakeMyTrip.com offered Indias first comprehensive travel product on the mobile. This allows customers to search, book, pay and fly through transactions and PNR solely on the mobile phone. We have a tie-up with Paymate and Airtel to offer m-commerce since over a year now, says Kalra.

The popularity of IRCTC, the official ticketing website of the Indian Railways, is another example of the success of online travel booking websites. IRCTC almost dominates 80-85% of the total railway ticket booking in the online space.

Following a similar model, a new player in the industry Redbus.in has tapped into the unstructured bus travel industry to provide online bus ticketing across India. Witnessing the growing success of the online transaction mode, most conventional travel agencies such as Cox & Kings, Kuoni Travels, and Raj Travels are also exploring innovations in the online space through the Web 2.0 interface.

We have in place a real time booking engine for all our products and packages which is integrated with all the point of sale locations Viral Gandhi, CIO, Cox & Kings	Going forward the travel industry will increasing explore SaaS and PaaS as a concept Ketan Chandaria, head, IT & business development, Raj Travels

Cox & Kings works with Oracle Financials for its accounting application and has deployed SAGE CRM across the network. We also have in place a real time booking engine for all our products and packages which is integrated with all the point of sale locationsbranches, agents, franchisees, direct clients, corporates, says Viral Gandhi, CIO, Cox & Kings. Kuoni too has a CRM developed by Satyam and is now jointly working on a pilot with Microsoft Dynamics.

While the large players have partnered with reputed IT vendors for developing applications, the comparatively smaller players and late entrants like Redbus.in have gone the open source and SaaS way to optimize costs. Redbus is in the process of deploying a Sugared CRM, which works well with our entire open source strategy. We are also planning to explore the custom built SaaS applications, says Phaninder Sama, CEO, Redbus.

Raj Travels too that has gone entirely adopted Saas for developing its internal applications and has outsourced most of its IT operations in contrast to its competitors. Raj has also availed of SaaS products keeping in mind the scalability aspect. Going forward the travel industry will increasing explore SaaS and PaaS as a concept, says Ketan Chandaria, head, IT and business development, Raj Travels.

BPO Booster
Over the last few years, the travel and tourism segment has been one of the biggest contributors to the growth to the BPO industry. While some of the big players in the travel industry have outsourced their contact center functions to BPOs, others have built captive BPOs to provide last mile service to their customers.

Kuoni has a large BPO arm named VFS, which deals in visa processing work across forty-five countries. While Raj Travels has a twenty-five people captive BPO close to its head office in Mumbai, Redbus has put in place a distributed BPO set-up across six cities to deal with the local nature of its operations.

With the introduction of newer travel concepts such as space travel and high net worth; individuals willing to shell-out a premium for special frill services; and the discovery of virgin travel destinations, the industry has been driving the demand for technological solutions that can make their business more scalable and robust.

The travel and tourism industry has come a long way in terms of selling the ultimate consumer experience. In an industry where innovation is short-lived, it will be interesting to see how the players further leverage on technology to create brand loyalty and establish a repeat customer base.

Priya Kekre
priyak@cybermedia.co.in

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