3 Small Travel Agencies that are going International
The usual stand of every Travel company is that the world doesn’t need another online travel agency.
One reason: Meta search businesses, which help consumers compare prices but send customers off to other websites to book, are cheaper to launch because they require fewer employees.
Another reason: Expedia, Inc., and Priceline Group are supposed to be too intimidating as competitors because of the enormous money they spend on branding and search engine marketing.
Despite the odds, several online travel agencies have gained traction recently with consumers. While some of these are not strictly “new,” they are all young, have and have all significantly accelerated their growth in the last two years.
1) Otravo isn’t new, but it recently sped up its growth. The Dutch company debuted as Otravo in December 2013, the result of a merger of two large Dutch travel companies (Vliegtickets.nl and WTC.nl) trying to transition to the digital era. Since then, it has grown its turnover 40 percent a year, to become the most used online travel group in the Benelux region and in Scandinavia.
2) MisterFly is little more than two years old, yet it processed 111 million euro in turnover in 2016. It expects to double that volume after it enters Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland this year. The company says it has positive earnings before depreciation and taxes, partly from outsourcing its customer service and partly from taking advantage of the European love of private sales, which are high-margin on distressed inventory.
3) Rehlat is a Kuwaiti online travel agency founded two years ago that plausibly claims to be the Middle East’s fastest growing travel company. It forecasts that it will double its visitors and see a 60 percent increase in flight bookings in the next couple of years. The 65-employee company competes with Musafir.com, MakeMyTrip.ae, and Cleartrip.ae. Rehlat is rumored to be looking at further international expansion.
So, can we infer something from this? The Travel market scenario is changing a much quicker pace. In today’s world, two things are becoming very important
a) Retaining the existing Travelers
b) Increasing the new Walk-ins
Today’s Travelers needs are changing. They want the tickets with a click of a button. Gone are those days wherein they were patient with the Travel agents taking their own time to issue the tickets or booking the Hotel rooms. The smarter the technology system in place, better the chances it will be for the Travel companies to outsmart the competitors. Every Travel agency, big or small need to onboard the Online Travel technology by having partnership with a Travel Technology company who has vision & capability to be associated for a long term.
Please let us know in the comments below whether is there any other Travel agency who has scaled up big time over the past couple of years. Feel free to share the article if found useful.