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‘Online bookings are growing in non-metro cities’

Dhruv Shringi Founder & Executive Director Yatra

Yatra's founder and executive director Dhruv Shringi tells Bhisham Mansukhani, he believes his travel retail website is perfectly placed to tap the growing trend of Internet users relying on this interface to plan and book their travel

How has Yatra been received by the travel trade, airlines, hotels and end consumers?

The responses we have received so far have been very encouraging. We are witnessing high demand for airfares because of the special promotion that we are running with some of our airline partners which reaffirms our faith that there is a great opportunity for us to work on.

What is your current count of airlines, hotels and car rental inventory?

Yatra currently offers flights for all major domestic carriers and has tie-ups with over a thousand hotels across 140 cities and towns in India. Yatra's customer service centre enables business and family/leisure travellers to make well-informed and cost effective bookings round the clock. We will continue to partner with all new airlines that will be launched and will increase our hotel alliances to cross 2000 hotels across the country by the next quarter. We also offer car rental facilities at all the metros and important non-metros and will also be launching bus booking facilities across the country. In a phased manner, we also plan to introduce online booking facilities for railway tickets.

How large do you perceive the Indian online travel market to be and how much of it do you expect to capture?

Indians are fast adapting to the Internet as a medium of shopping for the best deals. According to the recent statistics bought out by IMAI, the number of Internet users will go up to 100 million by 2007-08. Online deals in 2005-'06 were close to US $262 million, of which US $151 million (58 per cent) came from travel. Airline tickets accounted for US $88 million while railway tickets contributed US $63 million.

The number of Internet shoppers buying railway tickets will go up from 39 to 48 per cent soon. For airlines the increase will be sharper- from 29 to 46 per cent. Online hotel bookings have gone up to Rs 2.35 crore in 2005-06 from Rs 29 lakh in 2004-05. 20 per cent of Internet users have made hotel reservations and another 31 per cent plan to do so soon. One of the important trends to notice is that online bookings are growing in non-metro cities at a pace equal to that in metros. We plan to capture 20 per cent of the online travel agency market by the end of 2006.

How would you distinguish Yatra from the other travel retail websites?

Yatra has been established to cater to the local domestic market. Our competitive edge is our ability to offer customers a multi-channel distribution environment. Our investors have been strategically chosen in order to assist us in gaining this competitive edge. Reliance has a strong retail infrastructure via Reliance Infocom which will allow us to use their retails outlets for fulfillment and payment purposes, allowing us to reach 5,000 Indian cities and villages.

Our Flexible Flight Search tool enables customers to find the cheapest fare two days either side of their chosen date. Unlike other online websites which restrict their customers from booking flights 24-72 hours before departure, Yatra allows users to book flights up to 2 hours prior to departure.

Giving our consumers this personal experience and added-value will be another point of differentiation. Our call centre when fully operational, will have people speaking all 18 languages recognised by the Indian Constitution. This will help us to take care of every Indian's travel requirements.

Are you working on a separate B2B interface for other, smaller travel agents?

We are currently evaluating the need to develop a separate interface for B2B agents. However, agents can contact us on our toll free numbers to avail Yatra's discounted fares for their clients.