Archive for June, 2008
Online Travel Industry in India and web analytics status
Continuing from recent post on Current Internet status and web analytics opportunities in India, this post focuses on Online travel industry in India
Before you proceed! here’s what the post is all about
- Current Online Travel status and emerging trends
- Top Travel sites in India and Web Analytics Tool Used
- Summary of opportunities
India is clearly an emerging leisure online travel market, attracting millions in start-up funding,the Indian online travel industry is in full form.Online travel is expected to be a $2-billion industry. Interestingly, more than 17 per cent of all the flight tickets booked in India are done via Internet websites.
Online travel company MakeMyTrip (MMT) has recorded sales of Rs. 1000 crore for the financial year ending March 2008, as per a release. However the air ticketing space has seen margins erode and with competition coming not only from other travel sites but also the airlines themselves, MMT has started looking at other avenues like railway ticketing, tour packages and even bus tickets.
Yatra Online is another well funded travel portal that is looking at raising more capital. The company is looking at offline retail outlets for selling its travel services to grow revenues. They have a planned outlay of Rs. 20 million over the next 12 months for the offline retail initiative. They have also roped in SIFY as a partner and Yatra services can be availed of from over 7000 SIFY cyber cafes across the country.
ClearTrip is looking at adding international ticketing to its service offering. The company has raised $12 million so far and is also yet to break even.
A new trend in this space is that of meta search engines. Ixigo and Ezeego are two players in this space. A meta search engine searches all the online travel sites (including the airlines sites as well) and displays the best deals for the user. Meta search engines can aggregate special deals from airline websites that aren’t offered to OTAs. They can also aggregate special deals from OTAs themselves (some of which the OTAs pay for out of their own pockets), thus giving consumers a wider choice, and often better rates.
International players like Expedia and Travelocity have already set up shop in India. Both of them are focused on hotels and bring to the table a strong technology back end and ready access to a huge inventory of international hotels. Travelocity has added air tickets to its set of services
What’s Latest?
Travel websites, such as Make My Trip India Pvt. Ltd and Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd, are battling to win over India’s Rs16,000 crore ($400 million) religious travel market. Both companies control about 90% of the online travel market, according to Phocus Wright, a company that analyses travel market, and both said they are interested in expanding their fast-growing religious travel segments. There will be packages for all: Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Jains.
Oppurtunity in Online Travel Industry: $2billion
Let’s now take a look at Web Analytics Status/Implementation/Tools used for Top 10 Travel Sites in India.
Web Analytics Tool Used: HBX
Overview of WA: Make my trip uses HBX, with HBX now taken over by omniture and if makemytrip decides to go with omniture it certainly would be first few companies to use omniture. Makemytrip using hbx clearly shows that they are keen on web analytics!
Web Analytics Tool Used: Google Analytics and DGM track (probably)
Overview of WA Tool Used: Nicely implemented site! Going a step ahead than merely implementing the general code. Campaign tracking seen.
Opportunities: Some of Features contain “ajax” and which seems to be not tracked
Web Analytics Tool Used: None
Overview of WA: Cleartrip is a great vertical search sites! gives quick result and a must mention hotel booking which looks great. I followed the process from choosing flights to logging in, but i was surprised not to find “any” web analytics tool installed. “May be” they are just going with log files.
Opportunities: They need one badly! with such a great UI and such good features a firm certainly needs to understand how visitors navigate thru their site.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Urchin
Overview of WA: ezeego1 uses urchin, with just basic implementation. It looks like ezeego1 having urchin to understand traffic.
Opportunities: Ezeego1 is a great site! it not only has flight booking feature, but hotels, visa, car cruise, forex! lots of them. To understand which of these products/services work better a good analytics tool is must.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Statcounter
Overview of WA: I was surprised by the WA tool used by Arzoo, no GA ?? as the name goes seems they just need the traffic figure
Opportunities: Arzoo certainly needs a WA tool, atleast Google Analytics to start with. I dint go further to explore the options but this site falls in the category which provides more than flights and hotels.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Google Analytics, DGM Flight and Hotel Tracking
Overview of WA: So here’s a combination of couple of tools, GA looks to be default, and a tool called DGM Flight and Hotel Tracking code exists. ( which i should admit iam not aware of)
Opportunities: It feels like there’s different tracking of traffic and search done, this certainly does not lead to a successful WA tool implementation. There is a great improvement scope here to try and get “one” dedicated provider to do that.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Urchin
Overview of WA: A Fair good implementation of Google Analytics, the search criteria captured in js might be used in conjunction with Google analytics.
Opportunities: Indiatimes is a big name in India internet, they have been around for a while. Indiatimes on a whole is huge network of sites serving various verticals. Indiatimes certainly needs robust tool to help increase user experience and engagement.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Google Analytics
Overview of WA: Basic Use of Google Analytics, filter and other basic features seen
Opportunities: This is a great site! i love the rich features here. Lot of ajax and easy to use UI is a great USP for this site.
Web Analytics becomes important to understand how these features are being used and this site certainly requires some advanced tool.
Web Analytics Tool Used: Omniture
Overview of WA: I was surprised to see omniture on travelocity, but since this site belongs to same as lastmintue.com, so that made it obvious. Implementation can be improved! lot of unnecessary codes and pagename (foundation of ominture) seems to be not in the order.
Monthly Traffic:
Web Analytics Tool Used: Urchin
Overview of WA: Basic Use of urchin, i bumped into a under construction page and found no analytics code in there.
Opportunities: A Clean Implementation is required! Period
Summary:
To summarize all of above, Travel industry is a vertical which has huge online presence in India and growing. All the firms are now expanding their services apart from just providing air tickets and stay. The competition increases as more service providers join the race and “this is where web analytics plays a key role” for a firm to be step ahead.
So undoubtedly this would help Web Analytics Agencies and also lead to increased Job Openings for web analysts in the Online Travel Industry
In the next post! again related to Travel industry will focus on the latest trends and marketing efforts done in India.
What do you feel about the Travel Market in India!, Pen down your comments/feedback/critics
Disclaimer: This survey of the Web analytics tool used is done just to explore and understand the current status of WA in Online travel Industry India. If you do find any information which is not updated or incorrect. Feel free to reach out via comments or Mail and appropriate changes would be made.
$2 Bn public-private partnership for rural internet access
The government announced a $2-billion public-private partnership to provide broadband and internet connectivity in India’s rural areas.
Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia, speaking at Global Telecom Summit here, said that $1.5 billion for the project would be generated from the private sector and the balance would be funded from government sources.
The minister also announced 112,000 broadband centres would be set up in rural areas across the country, within a year.
“We will also have a policy for Wi-Max so that connectivity for broadband, particularly for rural India, becomes easier and convenient. The entire countryside would be provided with this facility, largely under the public-private partnership,” Scindia disclosed.
The ministry of communication & IT is also expected to unfold its third generation of mobile phone standards and technology – 3G service – guidelines by June this year. The 3G services are expected to be rolled out by the end of current year, said the minister.
“The aim of the these policies is to provide wireless telephone and mobile telephone to every household in rural India by 2010,” the minister stated.
Source: siliconindia.com
A new look Web Analytics India
It’s been a while you must have seen posts! and updates! Apologies to the readers! But wait the change and the look is thanks to all the feedback we have recieved! Nothing like feedbacks.
Change is refreshing!
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