Travelocity, the US-based online travel company, has grown into being the second largest in the US (after Expedia) with travel bookings of over $10 billion (Rs 40,000 crore). Its online brands, Zuji in the Asia Pacific and lastminute.com in Europe (both acquired through buy-outs), have emerged as local leaders. The company formally entered India's overcrowded market in December last year and its managing director, Himanshu Singh, when not trekking in the Valley of Flowers, is working on ways to wrest market share from the three leading, home-grown players "" makemytrip.com, yatra.com and cleartrip.com.
Singh spoke to Anjuli Bhargava on trends in the online travel market and Travelocity's strategies. Excerpts:
Why did you launch Travelocity in India, instead of Zuji, the brand meant for the Asia Pacific market?
Though India is a part of Asia, the orientation is more Western. In a quick dip stick, we found that the brand recall for Travelocity was higher and there were a few thousand people each month who were already visiting Travelocity from India and bookings were being recorded.
Why didn't you buy an Indian company to enter this market like you did in Europe and Asia Pacific?
We did the due diligence on a few possible opportunities. But for the time being we decided to go for organic growth. This does not rule out the possibility in the future. The existing players in India are funded by venture capitalists. We bought out lastminute.com in Europe.
More recently, we bought out all the airlines' shares with whom we had launched Zuji. So now, it is fully owned by us.
As a late entrant, how do you hope to break into the market of established players?
We have a presence in 40 countries, so we have a more varied experience. We have the products in place, so we don't need to build it from scratch. We have an established network with airlines and hotels.
While earlier we had premium hotels (four- and five-star), we have now broadened our network to suit a tighter budget. We offer 80,000 hotels now.
You can, for instance, book a flight, say, from New York to San Francisco or, say, from Bangkok to Krabi on one of the no-frill carriers in the US or in Bangkok on our network. Not all the Indian portals offer that. You can book on 450 airlines on our network.
We are also launching "destination stores". It's like a micro site for each destination and 15-odd are already live. It gives you the regular information on the destination and some "inside secrets". You can book your museum tickets in Europe or a temple tour in Indonesia or Malaysia from here.
You can book yourself to climb the Harbour bridge in Sydney or, say, climb to one of the levels of the Eiffel tower in Paris. So in many countries you can cut out the touts and commissions at different levels.
Don't some of the established players offer similar options?
Some do, but not to such extent. On our site, for instance, you can choose an activity-based holiday. In other words, if you want to go for a wine tasting trip, a snorkeling trip or a sea kayaking holiday, our site will give you the best possible countries to go to for these.
So, based on the activity and your budget, you can pick the destination and then weave the hotel and other tours into your plan.
We found through a survey that a lot of the leisure travel in India happens over the weekend. So to start with, we have launched a weekend get-away product (fly away or drive away) from Delhi and Mumbai.
This can be turned around and a client can ask "What can I do with say Rs 50,000 for four days" and suggestions will be thrown open to you. This is specifically targeted at the Indian market.
