I am Sanjay’s younger brother. I have been vicariously participating in all the excitement in India through conversations with Sanjay and reading Venturewoods. Now with the acquisition of my last venture I am relishing the thought of getting actively involved. I consider it a privilege to be part of this community and look forward to getting to know you all better.
I hope to post ‘Musing’s on different areas and this one on Travel is my first.
The evolution of the Leisure Travel and Hospitality Industry is something that I would like to examine and understand and would love to hear any thoughts.
As I start looking at this world, it seems to me that there are two parts of the industry
The first deals with building and operating the infrastructure that allows leisure travel: companies that build aircrafts, operate airlines, operate hotels, car rental services, theme parks etc
The second deals with facilitating the use of the infrastructure – like travel agencies, ticketing services, concierge services, tour operators etc.
There are companies that bleed from one category into the other often leveraging their brands to vertically integrate. I would be interested in opinions on if these two categories are adequate or a different view.
There are innovations in each category and below is a list of a few innovations in the categories, I would love to know what else people see as innovations and which innovations are significant and which ones in one category may trigger change in the other.
Operators or Producers of Infrastructure: These are usually capital intensive businesses
Aircaft : Smaller, cheaper and more fuel efficient: Enbraera etc and now Honda
Airlines : Air Taxis
Fractional Ownership: Destination Clubs , Cars , Jets
Use Facilitators
Online Travel Agencies: Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline etc
Online Travel Search: Sidestep, Kayak, Farecompare, Farecast, Paguna
Group Travel: Triphub, Groople
Reviews : Tripadvisor, Real Travel, 43places, wikitravel
Specialty Tours: Olivia
Concierge : Bluefish
- Muscle Capital : Delivered - May 22, 2013
- Visiting India - February 6, 2012
- ZumoDrive expanding team in Asia - January 26, 2010
Here is another addition to the indian travel industry, http://www.IdiscoverIndia.com
, the online travel guide/trip planner/cusotmize package provider/common platform for agents and customers. The indian travel space is definitely getting crowded.
Hi Sunil,
I have been tracking the online travel industry for almost an year now. Your framework is comrehensive in that covers all players.
From a purely online business perspective, I divide them into the following groups:
1. Travel service providers: airlines, LCCs, Hotel companies, Tour operators, car rentals etc.
1. GDSs and offline travel agents
2. Online Travel agents
3. Meta -searchers who index travel providers, GDSs and OTAs.
4. Also we cannot ignore Google and Yahoo, the normal search guys, who also end up servicing many travel customers through their generic search.
5. Travel Content companies who provide Trip advice, destination guides etc… This includes Web 2.0 ventures too.
3, 4 & 5 don’t process any transactions. They just reduce the search cost.
Cheers,
Sreekanth.
There are interesting things happening:
http://couchsurfing.com/ is a concept that allows you to find a free place to stay or people to hang out with while you are traveling.
Some of my friends are active users and swear by it for a fulfilling holiday, enabled by local friends in respective countries. A couple of them just got back from Greece.
Cheers.
R
People should be alerted about EXPEDIA. EXPEDIA is listed in the top ripoff link at the bad business bureau (http://www.ripoffreport.com ) and has two “dedicated” websites due to poor customer support and lies: http://www.victimsofexpedia.com and http://www.shameonexpedia.com
Kind regards