Travel 2.0 - Is that what’s next for the Indian Online Travel Industry?
Think of a travel site where you could do the following
- Read user reviews about a Hotel
- Read travel weblogs
- See traveler’s videos and photos about a Hotel, a place
- Read user reviews about an airline career
- Tag your travel searches
- Scrap book to jot down your travel plans and things to do, places to see in your travel
AND
- Book flights, hotels, cars, etc.
Okay, what I did is, I just sprinkled the Web2.0 concept on the online travel industry and called it as Travel 2.0. Recently we have witnessed a lot of growth in the Online Travel Industry in India and all of them just allow you to book flights, hotels, cruises, cars, etc. Let me first talk about the progression of the travel industry
- Traditional travel agents - booked the flights and hotels
- Online Travel Search Sites - Helped users to search for best deal and book it for themselves. Examples TravelGuru, FlightRaja, MakeMyTrip, Yatra, Cleartrip, Arzoo, TripMela and MeraTrip.
- Travel Meta-Search a site - Search is enhanced and provides more options to the travelers. It’s definitely a threat for the Online Travel Search Sites. Examples IxIGO, Mobissimo, Zoomtra, Ghumo
The online travel search sites and meta-search sites are more towards the Web 1.0 style, there is no Web 2.0 functionality added to it. What I mean by that is there is no user generated content / information which might help a potential traveler to make the right choice. Web 1.0 style sites are product centric (product here is the air ticket, hotel booking, etc) whereas the Web 2.0 travel sites are traveler centric and that’s what I call as Travel 2.0
To better understand let me explain what’s happening in the travel space in the US. Yes the US had sites like Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline, Hotwire, etc all are Web 1.0 style, and they all are product centric. Here is a list of Web 2.0 style travel sites, they are traveler centric
- Gusto - social networking style travel site funded by investor William Darr
- Real Travel - blogging based travel site. Raised $1 Mil last November
- Travel Post - blog based hotel review site
- Sheraton.com - I was impressed by this site. It has user generated content about their stay at Sheraton
- Trivop.com - video guide for hotels. This startup made to the final five at the European Startup 2.o0 conference in May.
These are clear indications that the next thing in the online travel space is Travel 2.0.
Social Networking is coming up right now in India. So I believe the next disruptor in the online travel industry would be a startup which applies the Web 2.0 concept to the travel industry, just a Travel 2.0 based site.
References for more reading on Travel 2.0
http://www.techcrunch.com/tag/trivop/
http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/grossman/2007-01-26-grossman_x.htm