eyefortravel - Travel Distribution India '06

‘Technology simplifies the search process’

Beatrice Tarka Co-Founder & CEO Mobissimo

Having successfully launched its India site, Mobissimo.in, in May this year, Beatrice Tarka, co-founder & CEO, Mobissimo shares her business plans with Jyoti Koul

How much leverage do travel portals have as opposed to GDS' pricing down the products?

There is a little misunderstanding here- the travel portals and GDS do not really compete with each other. Travel portals such as Travelguru, Makemytrip, YatraOnline etc are merchants that resell inventory of the airlines. GDS are not merchants - they are simply service providers - they provide a database in which airlines and travel agencies are storing their prices. GDS do not establish the prices of airline tickets and cannot sell them. Travel agencies compete with airlines and low cost airlines - the airlines try to reserve their web special fares to their own Web sites and the travel agencies try to use their purchasing power to negotiate large discounts from airlines for large number of seats purchased. Each travel agency will have its own set of prices and available seats - and those prices will differ from Travelguru to Makemytrip etc. Try a search Delhi to London, or Mumbai to Dublin on Mobissimo and you will see how prices differ.

How does this form the challenge of dynamic pricing on travel portals? Will the pricing be a key factor for channels doing parallel shopping?

The travel portals usually evolve into consolidators - in order to compete on pricing with airlines they have to have a critical mass of users and transaction in order to negotiate with airlines special discounts. The travel portals usually also tend to sell vacation packages (air plus hotel etc) to differentiate themselves from the airlines. Price is the most important factor in travel shopping. In this respect often the cheapest tickets sold via travel agencies are not modifiable or you have to pay penalty to change them.

How is technology going to shape the future of the travel industry in India and overseas? Also how will it impact online travel?

Technology simplifies the process of searching and will empower the users all over the world to see more options and get a better view on all travel offers. Users will be able to easily access fares and information from the hotels and airlines that do not participate in GDS. GDS is still an expensive option, which is why many hotels don't link to it. Currently, traditional travel agencies and even the old-school online travel agencies access only a fraction of all the available air and hotel inventory. For example, only 70,000 hotel properties out of 400,000 worldwide propose their inventory via GDS.