Knowledge

Etoursonline.com: Towards integrating Indian tourism industry

Etoursonline is the first Indian non air B2B online travel distribution engine integrating travel retailers, distribution affiliates, e-retailers, hotels, car rental and other tourism related service providers in Indian tourism market place and offering them a comprehensive business transaction platform. Yogesh Rathi, CEO, Etoursonline speaks to Express TravelWorld about the changing travel distribution scenario in India

Yogesh Rati

What are the challenges encountered in integrating traditional travel agents to the internet?

Internet technologies appear to have enhanced organisational performance by lowering costs, increasing efficiency, differentiating products and services or creating broader markets. Leading users of these technologies have found that the value of the internet lies not simply in automating existing business processes, but in creating new means of interaction between suppliers and consumers of products and services, often with significant implications for industry structure. Online interactions boost consumer expectations. Many traditional storefront industries - from retail to manufacturing to news - are now open around the clock, competing in a highly visible and competitive environment. There are few challenges, which hinder the traditional players to come online.

1. Barriers to, and constraints on, organisational change, as well as uncertainty about the efficacy and effects of internet-based applications.
2. Difficulty in making the necessary investments in, and managing, information technology in general will have even more difficulty adapting to the internet.
3. Besides the above there are certain external and internal factors that define the environment in which an organisation operates. External factors are often difficult for an individual organisation to address directly because they demand collective action. Internal barriers are easier to overcome but in many cases still present significant difficulties, even if the need for change is recognised as urgent.

The barriers here assume many forms, including market forces, policies and standards, finances, and technology:

Market forces: Changes in the travel marketplace - such as changes in consumer preferences - can have positive and negative effects on travel organisations and the viability of different Internet-based applications. The lack of coherent business models at work in many of the new Internet-based companies along with their lack of demonstrated strong financial returns, does little to persuade established organisations to aggressively shift to an Internet-based strategy. These barriers can interfere with business opportunities enabled by the Internet, reducing the incentive to undertake initiatives

Finances: Financial barriers arise from the complex and sometimes perverse mechanisms for funding.

Technology: Significant technological changes can create major dislocations rendering investments in existing technologies obsolete. Organisations cannot depreciate prior investments fast enough to keep up with the rate of change or shift their technical and human infrastructures rapidly enough without undermining organisational performance. This process of technological change is particularly challenging in a travel agencies context, where there is a heightened need to demonstrate the efficacy of such change - a process that can be expensive, time-consuming, and difficult.

Internal barriers: Internal barriers can prevent organisations from recognising the need to change and properly implementing the required changes. A lack of organisational self-awareness, responsiveness, and competency and a reluctance to change - characteristics of organisational inertia - all impede attempts to implement necessary change. Inertia is associated with a large size, long history, and complicated internal hierarchies - characteristics of many travel organisations.

An organisation's ability to change is influenced by many factors, including its competence, sophistication, and history of action with other technologies. When basic operating principles must be reinterpreted, organisations require time to promulgate, implement, and assimilate the new standards, policies, and guidelines based on the new principles. The appropriate use of new technology often requires a degree of process and role redefinition not usually encountered in travel agency settings.

It may pose threats to individual roles or positions, challenge the rationale of current business or clinical practices, demand rapid political mobilisation, encounter user resistance and require additional funding. Processes used in implementing new technologies, particularly if reliant on consensus, can slow the effort to adopt them. New forms of communication can require new interpretations of basic principles such as the core nature of an organisation's services. Achieving consensus takes time; perhaps more time than is feasible given the rapid pace of technological advances.

A travel agency may fail to capitalise on emerging technologies because its staff is not competent to understand how such technologies could benefit the agency. Uncertainty could cause an organisation to hesitate to pursue an internet-based strategy and could result in sub-optimal, deleterious or unnecessarily turbulent or inefficient change.

Technological and organisational capabilities forms the major hurdle in integrating traditional travel agents to the internet, i.e. online space. Moreover, a significant organisational commitment to internet-based applications requires information technology workers who are skilled in new technical areas such as HTML development, internet security and digital commerce. It may also result in unanticipated needs for expanded computing and information processing skills among the organization's information technology staff and other workers.

Practically, the effective use of information technology, including Internet technologies, can have a profound impact on organisational structure and function. As information is distributed efficiently to those who need it when they need it, lines of control and influence become clearer, and individual units often self-organise in new and more effective ways. The impact may be multifaceted, not only flattening organisational structures but also changing the skill mix of employees:

• Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of processes that customers use to judge organisational performance (e.g. scheduling an itinerary) or processes that form the core of the organisation's business (e.g. travel management)
• Develop partnerships with related organisations in an effort to leverage respective strengths (e.g. tie ups going on in the industry)
• Reach consumers directly to solidify brand names and eliminate intermediaries (disintermediation)
• Improve, differentiate, and deliver new services to key customers
• Improve organisational decision-making

How large an opportunity you see in the market today?

Online opportunity is tremendous. Indian domestic tourism provides huge potential if tapped with an integrated approach. This is where, Etours has taken the lead in E-enabling the present fragmented Indian domestic market by launching the first Indian domestic non air GDS. Statistical figures as provided by ministry of tourism shows that a total of 230 million trips were undertaken by domestic tourists in the country in 2002. By 2005, 390 million trips were already undertaken by domestic tourists in the country. Around 3.9 million international tourists also visited India during the same year. As per a survey conducted by Government of India, domestic tourism in India is growing at an average rate of 12 per cent per year while there is growth of 24 per cent in foreign tourist arrivals. If we go with statistical calculations we intend to have 10 per cent market share by the ear 2010.

What do you see as your USP?

We can outline our USP as follows:

1. The first non-air domestic travel products distribution company offering a comprehensive business transaction platform.
2. Capability of seamless integration with any e-Commerce travel platform; be the travel retailers, distribution affiliates, eRetailers, hotels, car rental and other tourism related service providers in tourism market place.
3. Alliances in place with Worldspan, eBay (Cultuzz), Cleartrip, Ezeego1, Traveldost. Many more international and domestic partners are exploring the possibility for integration on Etours platform.
4. Cox & Kings travel group as our strategic partner.
5. World class technology backbone
6. Dynamic interfaces
7. Most comprehensive Indian domestic tourism content
8. Real time distribution of travel products
9. Domain expertise and understanding of industry business process.