Rural Ticketing Rules The Roost

People from rural and semi-urban areas have become the primary customer segment for sub-agents, discovers Susan George

The debate rages on. Is India really in the grip of the 'feel good' factor? Has this syrupy syndrome seeped down to the rural areas as well? While many in the country say a firm no to the latter, the travel industry seems to believe otherwise, prompted by the fact that villages rule the roost when it comes to ticketing. No longer are people from semi-urban and rural areas bound to the land. An increasing number of non-IATA accredited agents have discovered that rural and semi-urban areas are a fertile ground for ticketing. The call of better prospects and bright lights beyond Indian shores have induced villagers to invest in buying tickets. Taking this recent phenomenon in their stride, sub-agents have made strategic attempts to penetrate villages, with one, if not several, contact people operating under them to garner ticketing from these regions. Up to 60 per cent of sub-agents' ticketing comes from these areas and the importance of this sector to the trade remains undisputed.

Smaller Markets…More Money

While Europe and the USA still remain inaccessible to most people from villages, countries around India have recently seen throngs of people from semi-urban areas flocking there. The Middle East and Asia Pacific region see the most traffic, with the primary hubs being Malaysia, Singapore, Bahrain, Muscat, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Kuwait. Sub-agents have identified that most travellers from these regions are labourers - many companies from abroad, taking into consideration the cheap labour in India conscript people from the villages and towns. With the glut of travel agents in any city, it is only natural that the industry would gradually look at new pastures to drum up business. Many non-IATA agents have intricate networks, sometimes comprising more than a dozen agents who manage to get a steady stream of small-town residents interested in travelling by air. There has been an increase in the percentage of people travelling from villages in the recent past, contend sub-agents. Agents credit globalisation and the penetration of television in the rural areas for the increased business from these areas. With about 15 agents working for him in towns like Erode, Thirunelveli, and Salem, sub-agent R Pandian, another sub-agent operating out of Chennai, organises about eight outbound tours a year comprising people from these regions. "One tour that we have organised for December is a Chennai-Colombo-Kuala Lumpur-Singapore-Chennai. We will be taking a group of about 25 people from villages to these countries. Thanks to globalisation, people in smaller towns are more aware of the concept of travelling, staying in hotels, and seeing new places. I would definitely say that this is a recent trend." He concludes that about 30 to 40 per cent of his business is culled from smaller areas around Tamil Nadu.

Profitable Business Expansion

So, how do sub-agents go about generating sales in villages, while their base of operations remains the city? Many sub-agents stick to regions that they are familiar with themselves in order to establish contacts and facilitate ease of collection. Says John Angel from Vimy Travels, "Much of my booking, about 60 per cent, is carried on through smaller sub-agents who form a good network in rural areas. About 20 agents filter into villages and smaller towns to book tickets for me." A Maheen from Shihara Travels agrees, "I have various sub-agents working for me in places like Nagercoil, Karaikal and Ramanathpuram in Tamil Nadu." While Maheen's contact people work for him without the banner of a formal agency, there are others who have set up shop in the region. S P Rajendran of S K Air Travels Services, is a case in point - having agency in Chennai, he started a smaller branch in Trichy to cater to the growing number of people from the region. Whatever be the pattern of the network, for most sub-agents, 40 to 60 per cent of their bookings come from these areas, making it their major portion of revenue. Even for those whose major chunk of turnover is ticketing generated in the cities, bookings from villages remain their most profitable form of income. Says Maheen, "Only about 40 per cent of my bookings come from villages and towns. However, business there is extremely profitable - city travellers have several options of choosing their agents, which forces these sub-agents to offer maximum discount to them, while villagers have limited options. All they expect is good service." Another concrete advantage that sub-agents find with regard to ticketing in villages is the negligible level of defaults with payments. Often, the ticket is the culmination of years of hard work and saving for the people from semi-urban areas. Says one agent, "With clients in cities, there is a much higher percentage of defaults, as many times there is a credit transaction. In villages, there is no problem with collection, especially as the payments are all in cash."

With e-ticketing making inroads into India, villages will, by all predictions, be the safest bet for travel agents. However, the vast majority of sub-agents still see e-ticketing as being a distant, if not implausible, threat, that is unlikely to affect their business in any way. Meanwhile, rural areas continue to be the stronghold of the agents, the call of distant lands proving an allure for many who were earlier bound to their land.

(With inputs from Aarthi Mani and Nisha Sridhar)