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There are 3 new posts in "WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India" The Indian OTA Nose Dive - Where Is The Value Beyond The Ticket?We had recently taken a look at the state of affairs in the Online Travel scene and concluded that a slowdown was eminent. Recently there was a lot of heart burn and more on the fact that major airlines like Jet, Kingfisher and Air India had pulled the plug on agent commissions of 5% and the same was reacted to by the OTA’s by way of pulling down the respective airlines listings. So major portals like Yatra, Cleartrip and a few others were not showing flights by Jet and others. During all this chaos iXiGo which is a travel search engine which directly links to the airlines site was happily claiming that people could still use ixigo to search and then directly book their tickets from Jet sites. Now finally the word is out that Jet has taken a decision to part with a measly 3% as agents commission and that too for Jet Airways and not Jet Lite. Kingfisher is still to take a decision on this as of now. Now the question that comes to my mind is.. Where is the value beyond the ticket when it comes to OTA’s? If you look closely most Airline sites now have booking engines which are pretty robust and when there are search services like iXiGo which search these same airlines which helps you compare the prices and then go on to the airline site to book then why would anyone use an OTA? I think the answer lies in providing value beyond the ticket.. First steps are already taken in this directions by diverification into different kinds of travel like rail, hotel, bus etc. The other step that needs to be taken is that of travel planning which is a major issue I see with most travel site. If their value is going remain that of a booking engine only then the user will soon move to sophisticated search tools like ixigo and zoomtra which give you the cheapest prices across all airlines and then land you to the airline site or I will just pick up my phone and call my travel agent to do the needful and not care about the commission he charges as its the price I pay for personalized services. Cleartrip had recently launched a product by the name of cleartrip for business and we had speculated that a Saas model for the same could be a money spinner as corporates have a lot of travel planning and if a product like that could cut costs then might as well charge for it. A freemium model so as to say. But again a longterm revenue opportunity for cleartrip. Yatra had launched Raahi sometime back and makemytrip has oktatabyebye but I haven’t heard much on both lately though I really feel content could be a big play in the travel space and another alternative way to differentiate oneself. All in all OTA’s need to think better and think fast if they need to survive this downturn and come up trumps. As its not only the airlines they need to worry about but search engines like ixigo and zoomtra as well which seem to be eating their share of travel bookings. Related PostsAlso Check Out: How Can VAS Become A Bigger Opportunity For Telecom Operators?Rajesh Jain of Netcore has written a 5 point to do list on how can VAS become a bigger opportunity for Telecom Operators. We liked it so much that we are reproducing his post here on WATBlog.. Rajesh Jain’s 5 Pointer on How can VAS become a bigger opportunity for telecom operators. Reasonably-priced Flat-rate Data Plans: The US leads the way here. From being a laggard in the use of mobile data, the US is now showing the way with all operators having flat-rate data plans. In India, the right price point, according to me, is Rs 100 per month. A plan like this will encourage the use of the mobile Internet and other services, and create the necessary pull for companies to start building out mobile data services. Operators will benefit from large-scale adoption of data plans. More Spectrum for Operators: Mobile operators in India have to make do with much less spectrum than almost anywhere in the world. The big cities, especially metros, have a severe shortage of spectrum. And so, mobile operators tend to focus on using the spectrum for voice rather than data. This needs to change. A worry is that even when 3G comes along (and that date still seems a year away - as it has been for the past 3 years), operators will focus more on voice than VAS given the spectrum constraints. Better Revenue Shares for Off-deck VAS Players: Mobile operators need to encourage off-deck VAS players and provide them support for billing. In this case, the billing fee should be 15% or so, rather than the 50-75% that is currently the norm (and which can continue for on-deck services). This will encourage VAS players to create a wide variety of services, since it provides a revenue stream where subscribers pay rather than a complete reliance only on advertising. Separate VAS from the Government Fees: VAS should be treated separately so that operators don't end up paying the 12-15% of topline as revenue share to the government. In fact, for VAS, service tax also needs to be applicable only depending on the actual service. For example, if my cash balance as a subscriber is used to pay for a book purchase, then it does not make sense to pay nearly 25% taxes. In that situation, the mobile operator is acting more as a mall than a telecom operator. Creation of a VAS Operator Licence: More elaborated on this point in his earlier post. We had also written a post recently on Mobile number portability which talked about how VAS would become important and almost imperative for telecom operators and could possibly reverse the revenue share. We feel that mobile number portability (depending upon how its executed) could single handedly revolutionize the VAS market in India. Anyone who has anymore pointers? Related PostsAlso Check Out: WWE Launches Social Network For Fans - 10% Of Its Fans Are From India!WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) has launched a social network for fans called WWE Universe. One can access this at fans.wwe.com. The social network has all the features including profiles, blogs, videos, picture gallery and groups for users. WWE GM digital media Brian Kalinowski says, "WWE Universe is the first social networking site specifically designed and developed for the WWE online community. We are very excited to provide an online destination that WWE fans can call home" WWE has also created a facebook group for WWE Universe and its using the same very well to drive conversation across communities. It has also uploaded promo videos on youtube. WWE which was formerly WWF has garnered an increasing interest from Indian audiences since 1990’s. I myself remember watching WWF as a kid and buying merchandise as well. As per alexa Indian traffic contributes over 10% to the WWE website and is the second most popular traffic destination after the US for WWE.com. Hence by this statistic India and Indian users become the second largest audience and market for WWE. On the whole Indian audiences offer a huge opportunity for WWE and they have been constantly engaging on the ground as well with wrestlers coming down to India for engaging in various promotional activities. On the digital front there hasn’t been much India focussed activity but rather global initiatives like WWE Universe. Maybe over time given the large contribution of Indian traffic WWE may look for an exclusive destination for Indian users.
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