The proliferation of internet all around the world has brought about a major transformation in the travel industry. Today, the travelers are going online - starting from booking tickets right up to planning trips - through the travel agency web portals. Despite the chance of saturation of the existing online market, a study by Statista suggests that the online sales market of the travel agency web portals is all set for a positive, online travel sales in the future - through the travel agency booking software. This will be further be led into travel startups to encash opportunities in tapped and untapped markets.
The venture capital companies, in 2017 alone has invested $ 5.3 billion in such startups with travel booking system. If we talk about the technological trends of the likes of Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence or even in terms of the predictions and statistics, it seems to be a favorable situation for these travel activity startups.
However, the success of the travel startups with travel booking systems is not dependent upon the opportunities that arise in the travel industry. In order to carry on with a sustainable travel business, it is imperative to have a thorough understanding of technology, customers, marketing channels and competitors due to this Travel Portal Development are in demand now.
There are challenges that are faced by the travel startups and they need to prove that whatever they are doing is the right thing - even if that means breaking the rules and the tenacity to see it through reality. We will now delve into ten golden rules for the tour and activity travels startups.
Ten Golden Rules for Tour and Activity Travel Startups
Curation Wins Over Aggregation
Inbound Vs Outbound
Suppliers Win Over Agents/Distributors
Use Products to Inspire
Which one Wins - Efficiency or Automation?
Think about the Industry Foundations
Not to Reinvent the Wheel
Products that Do Not Sell Do Not Matter
Take Care of Agent Requirements
The same Destination is not Travelled Regularly
Curation Wins Over Aggregation
Setting up a tour guide or tour operator has low barriers to entry. Curation requires knowledge on the various destinations or the products. In case of an aggregator, the customer reviews can be made useful to do away with a supplier or the product.
Inbound Vs Outbound
If the traveler from the UK wishes to travel to a country like New Zealand, then they will choose a New Zealand based operator /travel agent instead of an outbound operator from the same country that is the UK.
Suppliers Win Over Agents or Distribution
This is more applicable for selling multi-day tours. If the sales take place on third party websites, the metasearch will win long-term transactions rather not the distributed ones.
Use Products to Inspire
The product must be inspiring and not the User Interface (UI) of your website. Use tools on product comparison o videos to inspire.
Which one Wins - Efficiency or Automation?
Efficiency wins over automation for multi-day tours and it is the other way round for the day tours. This two are different based on marketing, partnership on onward distribution and technical aspects.
Think about the Industry Foundations
A travel startup will provide value - with the foundation of data. Your website may have a great look and feel but stale data will not have an automated feedback loop -to keep the data correct. In case of the travel startups, must solve a problem - in a scalable way, that fulfills the funding needs.
Not to Reinvent the Wheel
The tours /activities startups must take help of the distribution issues already faced by the existing hotels/airlines. But on account of lack of expertise in the hotels/distribution may sometime lead to the reinvention of the wheel.
Products that Do Not Sell Do Not Matter
There are products like tour itineraries that are found on the website- for attracting travelers through search engine optimization - buying the core tours. However, the airlines or the hotels listed on the websites, do not offer products that they do not exist. This must be kept in mind while counting tours in a website- for conducting market research.
Take Care of Agent Requirements
The agents of the small tour operators will never be knowledgeable enough and will always reach out to complete a sales. For building an agent interface, the needs must be considered like any other consumer interested in the product for the first time.
The same Destination is not Travelled Regularly
It is less useful to build CRM or long-term relations as the case of multi-transaction relations that exists for airlines or chains of hotels. So, it is difficult to go for community building in case of your travel website.
Finally, the above rules are not appropriate for every situation for the travel startups and travel agency web portals but sometimes they need to be broken to enable better decision making.
