Surf's up!

TRAVEL: Don't look now, but travel websites are changing fast to keep pace with new wave travellers.

What does the travel agent do for you? He guides you on destinations and hotels, right? Now imagine doing this all for yourself, not just by searching for that wonder destination on the Internet, but getting reviews and authentic first-person accounts from other travellers you vibe well with.

That's the next level for travel portals "" call it Travel 2.0. "The best marketing for travel is through word-of-mouth," says Sachin Bhatia, CMO, makemytrip.com. And, as the blog phenomenon has shown, that's what the Internet is good for.

Makemytrip is changing the entire look and feel of the website, converting the platform from .net to Java, and incorporating new features of the Travel 2.0 era. Users will be able to rate, review experiences and post cross-links.

Bhatia feels that there is very little loyalty in the online space. Individual preferences are fragmenting fast in accordance with varying ideas of a terrific holiday. The Internet-driven traveller fits the bill of an adventurous psychographic profile, and this is just the sort of person who wants novelty rather than a standardised vacation.

Travel portals are rushing to keep up. "We will eventually change from selling the lowest fare to help in finding the best travel experience," says Bhatia. Peer reviews, scrapbooks and other user-generated content, most feel, is the way to go.

Ashwin Damera, CEO, Travelguru, feels that user reviews will be the proverbial next big thing. By year-end, the website will have options to upload pictures, post blogs and create an online community.

"How Travel 2.0 affects bookings is not known yet, but it does build brand loyalty," says Damera. And yes, it does help keep the user engaged (he hopes to double the average user time spent at the site to three minutes).

Dhruv Shringi, co-founder, Yatra, feels that these add-on features should yield more bookings, too, eventually. Yatra plans a blog with an integrated forum for content search.

The odd one out, at the moment, is Cleartrip. Hrush Bhatt, its founder, says that the site's focus at the moment is to provide a reliable fast search. Some of the more interesting features are video blogs, podcasts, city maps with click-a-booking hotel flagpoints.

Competition is clearly doing wonders in the travel portal space. But while technology is enabling quite some new features, individual gateway preferences can often turn on quirky attributes. Just as adventurous travellers like to boast of their latest discovery on the big blue globe, so do web surfers of their latest new find in cyberspace. Pssst "" tried isango.com yet?