The seasoned traveller has been there and done that. He’s gone on cruises, taken package tours and now believes the time is right to set off on his own.
However, who do these travellers and backpackers turn to for advice on hotels, must-see attractions and transport? Travel review sites claim to fill the information gap here and these are slowly becoming popular for their ‘for travellers, by travellers’ approach.
While, there are many sites to choose from such as HolidayIQ, raahi, TripAdvisor and OkTataByeBye, among others, the common thread is that all cater to a community of users passionate about travel. While these sites have been in existence since 2000 in the Western world, India wasn’t too far behind, with HolidayIQ starting in 2004. The business is thriving, with Asia having the highest number of internet users in the world.
Sharat Dhall, MD, TripAdvisor-India, said, “It’s because we have a population of one billion and counting that the number of users feels smaller. However, 50 million by Western standards is a huge market.”
TripAdvisor, one of the later entrants in the space in India sees about 35 million monthly visitors and has corporate tie-ups with other travel sites such as Cleartrip and Yatra.com, and the Indian railways, which lead to more internet users noticing the brand.
Sumedh Samant, an engineering student, says, “I have always loved to take off on my own and usually landed up going through brochures of tour operators to get an idea of must-visit attractions. I think it is preferable to learn from experiences of others.”
Working model
User traffic on these sites is seasonal to a certain extent, experiencing a 20 per cent jump a month before vacations. On the average, most sites have 50,000 to 500,000 registered members. Usually, a review is cross-checked to ensure the user has actually been to the establishment he is writing on.
“A computer program looks for specific words in reviews we receive, such as deliberately bad language, etc. Once these are sorted out, then we look at these manually. We also have the management of these establishments responding to users’ dissatisfaction, if any,” said Dhall.
Pratik Gupta, a research analyst with Beroe Inc, said: “The choice of reviews available online from people who have been there and done that works great as a complementary method of gearing up for a trip. The business does take time to register profits, but the potential for expansion in India is great.”
“Our business model is ad-based, where companies pay us to have their ads on our website. I think that its one of the best ways for smaller hotels and restaurants to market themselves,” said Dhall.
