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Cultuzz to Power eBay India's online travel foray

Will set up local call centre

Bhisham Mansukhani - Mumbai

eBay India has hopped on to the speeding bandwagon of OTAs by focusing on calling in its global owner's tie-up with Cultuzz, a global provider of backend solutions, to power its online travel retail.

Cultuzz will power eBay India's site, as well as offer eBay India's principal suppliers. According to Micheal Hughes, "eBay and Cultuzz have a market to market relationship with the partnership in Germany being the longest one at five years. In that market, eBay and Cultuzz together approached the tourism industry and offered them a solution to sell distress inventory on eBay Germany and built the market today. This has now been rolled out to all German speaking markets and other developed European markets. In India, we have formed a partnership, which takes into its fold both commercial interests and content provision in order to deliver to the eBay consumer what they want and need from an OTA.

Cultuzz, Hughes said, will engage the Indian travel trade to provide them with the avenue and tool to distribute their inventory, built specifically to keep their systems in mind. "We can plug into the booking system of our vendors and pull their inventory directly to eBay consumers. eBay's role will be to keep the platform interesting and an effective interface. Gautam Thakkar, country manager, eBay India, added, "It's important to emphasise the fact that eBay is not a travel expert. Cultuzz will bring that expertise to the mix, while we provide an interesting and interactive platform as well as a captive audience that is only growing. Leveraging the buyer community that we have, providing a secure platform and getting Cultuzz to help our suppliers and vendors to integrate with the eBay site.

The opportunity for the approach eBay was taking, Thakkar emphasised, was huge as an estimated 80 per cent of travel products in India are not enabled for distribution worldwide. Cultuzz's connectivity enables, `Cult Booking,' (a free facility for vendor partners) to channel products and content through to eBay. Uniquely, the company is targeting smaller players, particularly entrepreneurs by offering them `a level playing field' irrespective of size and volume of business. "With Cultuzz, we will bring online, the smaller locations and unique offerings that Indian tourism possesses. It will have what the big agents have because that is part of the mix. An open market place will be encouraged. In terms of revenue sharing, our approach towards travel will be different, but it is confidential information. Unlike typical OTAs, eBay is not bound by supplier contracts and therefore has the strength of offering a larger and ready buyer base that has demonstrated the intent of buying. The auction model is also an eBay USP," Thakker said.