Sunday, May 25, 2008

The Travel Portals: Part 1

Today i browsed through indian travel portals. The most popular ones are ClearTrip , MakeMyTrip, ezeeGo1, Yatra and TravelGuru. And there are relatively unpopular ones such as tripMela, rediff FareSearch, ixigo, 90di, travelocity, RajTravel and indiatimes travel site. The sites such as rediff FareSearch and ixigo are simple search engines which do not provide any ticket booking facility.
Here is a video file where i captured these popular portals:



Technical integration & business model of travel portals:

For integration and automation of booking and ticketing processes along with real-time access to flight details, Airline Reservations System (ARS) was evolved. Most of the travel portals use GDS (Global Distribution Systems) like Amadeus, Abacus and Galileo etc. - They provide access to full-service airline systems for fare/availability. These GDS companies have developed their own Web interfaces, and now sell their services directly to consumers ( online travel portals). The travel portals also have to register with IATA in order to do ticketing and settlement. Additionally, they register as an agent with low cost carriers and negotiate with the airlines for commissions and bonuses. Online advertising and commissions on ticket bookings is the main source of revenue for these travel portals. So which portal is the best ?? Well its a personal choice and experience. Here is my personal favourites in each category : Airlines, trains and bus ticket bookings:

ClearTrip.com
irctc.co.in
redbus.in

In my next posts, i will try to show some unique features of these portals. Also ill try to bring out a UI design of an All-in-One travel booking portal which will include air, train and bus train bookings together :).



7 comments:

Bhuwan said...

Did you know that cleartrip is a blatant copy of Kayak

Aayush said...

Thanks Bhu1 for the info. Well for the homepage its the same (blatant copy)..but it looks like ClearTrip Calendar, and ClearTrip Graphs are innovative products of ClearTrip research. Stay tuned for Part 2 ;)

Bhuwan said...

Ideas for part 2 of reviews:
cleartrip trains
and
90 degree

David John said...

The different travel portals described by you are excellent. They described very good services
bus to genting

David John said...

Helpful information indeed. Thank you so much for your sharing with all of us. Kindly Continue your great job and always gain my support!
singapore limousine

Unknown said...

Nice Post...
mysore-to-coorg-cabs

Soni. nivedita said...

If you want to travel with your pet then you need to know about the airlines pet policy here are some website which has information about pet policy the link is mention below:
delta pet policy
alaska pet policy

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