About a year and a half ago, I was contacted by an analyst with a large consulting firm in Mumbai. I used to work for a boutique tour operator then, and the consulting firm had been commissioned to do a study of opportunities in the travel space. The analyst wanted my views.
To be honest, I'm not too sure if he got anything of value out of me, but I did get a nice coffee and sandwiches. :) The interview got me thinking on some different lines from how I always looked at my job, my company and the travel industry.
The company I used to work for is probably one of the better tour operators out there. It has many awards to prove it, and from the inside, I can say that the commitment to do the best we could for our clients ranked pretty much above anything else, including making money. (being a passionately run, family owned business with no shareholders to worry about helped) As a tour operator, we gave our customers the best holidays we could, at prices that seemed value for money.
The question that struck me was: "Is this the best a customer can get?"
Tour Operators are companies that you normally buy your holiday from. You see an advert, contact them, look at what they offer, and pay them for your holiday.
Most don't actually operate the tour! They usually do not own the vehicles, or employ and train the drivers and 'reps' .. many don't even book the hotels or tickets! This is especially true for holidays to other countries, or far off areas in your own country.
That job is done by smaller travel agents called 'Destination Management Companies', or sometimes, 'Local Agents'. They are local to the area where they operate holidays, know their area intimately and have excellent local contacts - useful when Mr Murphy comes a-calling.
The 'Tour Operator' is essentially a Marketing Agency. They put in those full page adverts in the papers and run expensive pay-per-click campaigns. They have offices in prime locations and a bunch of 'sales agents' manning the phones answering your queries about the bathroom in your hotel in Leh .
Seems like a good bit of your money is not paying for your holiday, doesn't it?
To be honest, that's not entirely true. They do provide you the reassurance that you are booking your holiday with someone reliable, and that if something were to go wrong, your money will be protected.
Usually, when we set out to buy a holiday, we don't know too much about the place we are going to.
We looking for ideas & information on where to could go, what to see there, where to stay, how safe it is to go out at night ... a number of things, and no one reliable source of information.
Given how precious our holiday is to us, how desperately we want things to not go wrong, the temptation is to play it safe and book with a well-known travel company.
Any good marketer plays on their customers' fears to sell them what is most convenient to produce, for as high a price as they can manage, and to them from going anywhere else.
When they succeed, you know you're going to get less that what you could have, and you're going to pay more than you should have!
So, as I said, "Is this the best a customer can get?"
How about All the information you want at one place?
How about You plan your own holiday?
How about Dealing directly with the ground handler?
How about Getting several quotations, so you know you got a good deal?
We've put together a lot of information about India, for starters. It's known to be a 'difficult' destination for tourists, even for Indians (just the number of languages spoken in different regions is mind-boggling).
You have destination guides, maps, train & airline schedules, hotel listings and a bunch of other information. Most of this is incorporated in our very easy to use (not so easy to build! .. ask Sunand) Holiday Planner.
We also put together sensible itineraries for the most popular destinations, so you can just import them into your Holiday Planner, pick hotels, change anything you want to, and get quotations.
We back it up by getting the best local travel agents on board, so you have the same or better holiday experience, at vastly better prices.
We promise to keep improving every aspect of our service, so you continue to get a better deal. We're pretty sure if we do a good job of that, it will be worth our while too :)
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