eyefortravel - Travel Distribution India '06

‘There is place for both, traditional and the modern’

Raja Natesan Vice President & CEO Galileo India

Raja Natesan, vice president and CEO of Galileo India, analyses the future of online travel business, in an interview with Reema Sisodia

How do you think the market will react to the various booking options in India?

Many booking options are already available in India and the major one of course is the online credit card booking. Other booking options like kiosks, public booths, ATMs and mobile phones are on the verge of becoming popular. As long as a booking option is easy to understand, offers a secured payment method, has a smooth and easy booking flow with not too many complicated forms to fill and offers benefits like price and time, any option would be accepted by the market.

What do you think of the traditional booking tools?

Traditional booking tools have their own place in the market and will continue to do so. Traditional booking tools like the GDSs are built on large servers and use software like Unix which are built for high volume transactions and heavy load without compromise on performance. The closer the software is to machine language the more efficient it is with fewer chances for error. The more user-friendly it is, the more number of processes involved at the back-end, the more possibilities of error and less chances of the application being able to handle heavy loads over a long period of time.

How will low-cost carriers impact the online booking business in India?

All low-cost carriers will have a major part of reservations coming through direct to consumer channels, which would naturally be online. Of course a chunk of business would be through travel agents but again through the Internet. Therefore, these carriers are playing and will continue to play a major role in increasing the overall size of the travel pie in India.

How does the Indian online travel market differ from others countries? What challenges does e-commerce in India present?

The Indian travel industry has for a long time been subject to certain laws, taxes, formalities that the industry elsewhere had got rid of many years ago. But there has been progress in the last six to eight years and the government has realised the importance the e-commerce industry.

However, the Indian travel industry has some inherent differences and it starts with our cultural ethos. Europeans and Americans are races that are far more self-contained. Indians like to deal with people. Credit card transactions are considered safe abroad despite smart hackers. In India we are relatively hesitant as yet. Credit periods are not strictly enforced in India.