http://www.provab.com - The future of travel portal development could be directly related to the growth of travel industry. In the last decade, the travel industry has witnessed many important changes and implementation of technology to every aspect of tourism has been one big leap, which has benefited the travelers along with the organizations into the business of tourism. The aspect of development can be related to the emergence of travel portals and travel apps.
A travel portal is developed with the main aim of providing online booking facilities for the end-users, visiting the website. The most important features included in travel portal are air ticket booking, hotel booking, bus booking, car booking and chartered plane booking. Previously air ticket booking was considered to be the most important element of travel portal development. With the airlines becoming stingier, hotel booking is predicted to be the future of travel portal development.
The aviation industry over the world and specifically in India has been going through a turmoil phase. We often hear stories about the soaring prices of the airline tickets, decline in the demand of air travel, increase losses mounted by the airlines and in certain cases the carrier busting has lead to the decline in the number of air travelers. The current incidents of Malaysian Airlines and Air Asia flights have raised question over the safety of the air passengers. At one point of time air ticket booking was considered to be an eminent part of travel portal development, now it has taken a back seat. Travel portal analysts predict that the future of travel portal development is with hospitality industry.
To stay in competition, low cost carriers are selling their air tickets directly through the airline websites. Selling tickets at a discounted price or lower price has been one of the marketing strategies of the airlines to sustain the competitive market. When such kind of offers is put forward by the airline company, they try to sell maximum number of tickets through their own website, giving a stringent space to the travel agencies or the travel agent. Presently the airlines sell 50% of the tickets through their company’s portal, compared to the earlier percentage of 30%. The message is very clear, the airline companies want to eliminate the online travel agent and cut down on the thin profit margin that they get. Hence the future of travel portal development is not safe with airline booking.
Hotel booking turns out to be a much safer option. With the number of travelers increasing with each passing year and new destinations discovered by the people in the travel business, the demand for accommodation has been rising. The statement holds true specifically for the exotic locations, where even a small company into the hospitality sector want to project its premises and get booking from international travels. Since the margins for the airline reservation are under pressure, the business model of the travel portal development is moving towards hotel reservation and holiday packages which projects a better prospect of growth and revenue generation.
As per Deep Kalra, the founder and CEO of makemytrip.com, the travel portal use to get 90% of its business from air travel, which has now dipped to 70% and is further predicted to go down to 50%. As per the recent data, priceline.com regarded to be the most valuable travel agency, generates 97% of its total revenue from selling hotel room. The case is same for expedia.com, where the 73% of the total revenue generated on a yearly basis comes from hotel booking. Selling hotel booking through the travel portal is an attractive offer as hotels share 10% - 15% of the profit with the travel agents, making it a profitable deal. Selling rooms for fragmented landscape comes with a better profit margin. This comes as a good deal for small hotels which cannot afford to spend money on advertisement for hotel room booking.
With the travelers getting accustomed to booking hotel rooms online, travel portals are gaining good amount of profit from hotel booking. The travel portal can tie up with numerous numbers of hotels across the globe and process hotel room booking for them. As per the data, earlier only 30% of the bookings were done online and the rest were done through phone. The present scenario is different, where 70% of the booking for the hotel rooms is done online and 30%over the phone.
Even the hospitality industry is making things better for the guests with the touch of technology. Owing to the rise in the number of travelers willing to be a part of the wonderful journey of technological hospitality, the future of Travel portal development is safe with hotel booking.