Though the journey so far has been exhilarating, it would be an altogether different excitement and thrill to see people planning their holidays and enjoying their vacation using the TailorMyHoliday platform.

God willing, I am sure, the day is not too far!

We humbly solicit your feedback on any aspect of the TailorMyHoliday web service. Thanks in advance.

-Siddharam

Happy and 'Content' !!

I’ve never blogged before. Since my first attempt is for TailorMyHoliday, let me tell you about my experience here in the last few months.

Six months back I hadn’t even dreamt that I’d be here. Back then I was working with the Times of India. A colleague of mine asked me to find content writers for a travel website. Given how busy I was at work, I have no clue why I said, “Can I write?". You could call it serendipity. I started off as a freelancer, writing travel guides for places I was familiar with. My first article was probably a little amateurish but I think I got better with experience and the feedback from Siddhartha. (At least that’s what he would say ) I would wait for feedback like a 5 yr old waiting for a report card. Researching travel destinations was fun - it's almost (but not quite) like travelling there yourself.

About four months passed and I was in for another surprise. Siddhartha asked me if I’d like to join full time. I had never thought of switching jobs. I was all set to leave for college in less than a year. The thought of working with TMH was extremely exciting. I took the plunge.

Most of what i do at TMH involves working on the content on the website. We've tried our best to put together all the information you might need to plan your perfect holiday. Our destination guides cover everything from what a particular place is best known for to which local market you should visit to get the best bargains while shopping. We even suggest the kind of cuisine you should try while visiting a certain place. In a country as diverse as India, each place is known for its regional preparations so we believe you shouldn't end up eating Indian Chinese or some pasta with garam masala just because you were not aware of the right place to go to.

Our Content Policy

One of the free services provided by TailorMyHoliday is our collection of detailed travel information. This includes Destination Guides, Maps, Train Flight and Cruise schedules, and Hotels information.

Naturally, most of the information we provide here is freely available - as it is in the interest of the respective providers to make it available. We have taken it on ourselves, at this stage, to be a consolidator of this information, so that

1) All the information you need is available at one source
2) The information is factually correct, to the best of our knowledge
3) All this information is actionable (i.e. you can use it directly in your Holiday Planner)

A lot of our destination guides are based on research from secondary sources, gathered under the supervision of experienced travel professionals. As we go along, we intend to have more and more content based on primary research.

While our destination guides gives you information on what you can do while visiting your favourite holiday destination, our journey search will give you the latest flight and train schedules. It also gives you information on drives in case you are planning to rent a taxi or drive down yourself. (not that we reccomend the latter, but there is no accounting for some tastes!)

If you are in the mood to explore the area some more then go through our well researched list of excursions. The excursion list covers destinations nearby that are ideal for a day trip/half day trip. It could be a wildlife sanctuary, an ayurveda centre, a secluded beach, a tribal village, or a popular temple nearby. Some of these are lesser known destinations far from the maddening city life are guaranteed to make your trip a memorable one.

It is difficult to capture the essence of a place in a picture or two but we've tried our best to bring you pictures that give you a glimpse of the destination you are looking forward to visit. Most pictures are by non-professionals, and while the lighting or composition may not always be perfect, you get to see the place from a fellow traveller's eyes.

We hope you find all this information useful. We will keep updating all this information on a regular basis- adding new destinations, updating our flight/train schedules, deleting outdated information so that you have all the latest information in one place. After all we want you to have the holiday of a lifetime.

I love being here. I love my job. And though I could give a hundred reasons why I’m happier at my work place than most people my age, these will do ...

• I get pampered with chocolates often (that’s the best part). All you guys from Google, before you make comparisons let me tell you I don’t have to go to fetch my own chocolate from the jar.
• I get the latest updates on cricket without even having to subscribe to any alerts on my phone.
• I get to listen to good music.
• I get to read some really funny stuff in submitted articles - such as how you can buy fossils in a little town down South. Trust me, it's not legal!
• I can now survive in Orissa because I’ve learnt with experience that if an Oriya says “kam karne ka man nahi” (hindi: "i dont feel like working") he actually means “Kanyakumari”, or if he says “Dublin” he only means “W”.
• I don’t need to lie to my boss if I need to leave early to see my boyfriend.

What's in it for the Travel Agent?

As I explained in a previous post, the typical holiday is sold by a Tour Operator - a marketing company based in the traveler's home location. Holidays are actually operated by smaller companies known as Destination Management Companies (DMC's), or Ground Handlers, or Local Agents.

These are the guys who provide all the services you paid for, including booking your hotels & tickets, providing local transport, guides and sightseeing tours - it is their staff that meets you at the airport, helps with check-in at hotels and airports, calls to confirm the time for tomorrow's sightseeing tour and that you are happy with your room.

This is standard division of labour based on core competence (a fancy term that you should look up sometime). The Tour Operator has the marketing skills to attract holiday goers, but the staff you deal with in most such companies may not know the destinations very well - they sell everything from India to Iceland!

Local travel agents are the ones that transform a set of hotel bookings and tickets into an memorable holiday experience. They have the operational skills, local knowledge, network of contacts, trained staff and infrastructure (like vehicles, camping equipment, mountain bikes ...) to ensure that your holiday happens perfectly, but lack the marketing skills or advertising budgets to attract customers.*

*Note: Distinctions are often blurred, but this division is roughly true in most cases.

Local agents usually work with tour operators on a contract basis. Contracts are usually for a full year or more, and based on a combination of quality, reputation and price. As is usual in any such set-up, decisions are based largely on the measurables - price in this case. An annual contract may be worth several hundred thousand dollars, and for a local travel agent, getting a contract from a large tour operator means the difference between a good year and a middling one. They are forced to keep margins low, and need to maintain these low prices throughout the year, even in the face of inflationary pressures.
Dealing directly with customers means they have more flexibility in pricing.

Credit for a well organised holiday, or more courteous & efficient staff, or nicer cars goes to the Tour Operator in the form of better reputation, or the ability to command higher prices. Almost no benefit trickles down to the local operators. There is no incentive to do a better job, and in fact, as margins are low, many are tempted to skimp on the non-essentials (cold towels, free bottled water etc.)
Dealing directly with customers makes it worthwhile to invest in quality.

Often holidays are marred by poor planning and incorrect advice/information imparted by Tour Operators, whose staff do not have on-the-ground knowledge of the destination as ground operators do. (Try asking a tour operator which hotel will be able to provide gluten-free meals for you) When a holiday unravels on the ground, like when the promised hotel right by the sea turns out to be three streets away from the beach, guess who's left holding the baby?
Dealing directly with customers reduces bungling & misinformation.

It gives the better control over their business, more operational independence and rewards good performers with increased business and margins. They deal directly with their customers, so understand their needs better and give them better itineraries. They get the opportunity to promote interesting and unique ideas (a new home-stay, an out of the way picnic spot .. ) to their customers, and are not limited by the brochure some tour operator printed 2 years ago.
Dealing directly with customers means more 'customer delight'

Even without charging more than they used to previously, a local travel agent's financial position improves tremendously when he gets direct business. He is paid immediately for the holiday he sells, rather than as many as 1-2 months later, as in the case of business through Tour Operators. This frees up huge amounts of cash and savings in interest or overdraft charges.
Dealing directly with customers means improved cash cycle.

Travelers often have a budget in mind for their holiday. More often that not, this budget is spent in full. If a holiday is cheaper than anticipated (for example, if the Tour Operator is cut out), travelers tend purchase add-on tours, hotel upgrades or hire a luxury car instead of a standard one. The traveler gets more for her money, while the travel agent gets higher revenues.
Dealing directly with customers means higher revenue per holiday.

Besides, who ever said 'No' to additional business?

It's every travel agent's dream to be able to get business directly.
We believe the TailorMyHoliday way gives better value not only to the customer, but also to the service providers. Our set of Travel Agents seem to agree!

So, what are we all about?

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 Explained:

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 :)

Hello World!

Welcome to the TailorMyHoliday Blog.

We started this blog to share our view of the holiday industry and how we want to change it, experiences working in a start-up environment, daily trials and triumphs, and occasionally to elicit feedback from you all.

Can't say we're anywhere close to where we want to take TailorMyHoliday.com, but its been a thrilling ride so far ... so hop aboard!

P.S. some of us tend to ramble ... bear with us ... :)