Ticket to Technology

Galileo India commenced operations in the country in 1994. Since then, it has

widened its network to 97 cities and established itself as a player of repute in

the travel trade. It's business head Vivek Verma spoke to DQ on the impact of IT

on the travel trade, and how his company had been benefiting from it. Some

excerpts:

What

role does IT play in travel and tourism?



Given the huge amount of data available, from customer details to tour

options, the focus is on databases. Customer relationship management (CRM) has

been another key enabling area in this transaction based travel industry. Some

of the applications have been– faster and better responses to customer queries

and storing customer profiles to make future transactions easy. Travel agents

could also use IT as a tool to widen the reach of their business.

What

has IT’s impact on your industry been?



The biggest impact of course, has been improving efficiency. Travel agents

are now able to promote destinations better. In the earlier days, tourism was

restricted to commonly known destinations. Travel agents are now equipped to

promote off-beat destinations as well. A travel agent’s web site would have

detailed information about lesser-known tourist destinations including pictures.

How

has the end-user benefited?



Process efficiency has translated into increased profitability, higher

quality of service and lower prices as well. For Indians wanting to travel

overseas, the options were limited to USA and Europe. The Internet has ensured

that the tourist can explore exotic locations. Besides, customers had to be

completely dependent on the agent for chalking out the itinerary. With the

information at hand, customers can now indicate fare, mode of travel and even

airline that suits them best. The control has certainly shifted from agencies to

the end-user. Similarly, customer would have to make two trips to the travel

agent’s office to get travel insurance done. Now, when a passenger visits a

travel agency for a ticket, the agent enters his passport number, countries to

be visited and dates of travel into the computer and the system prints out the

insurance policy. A 48 hour procedure and two trips to the agent’s office have

been reduced to a few minutes!

Why

is it that despite the proliferation of travel sites, e-commerce has not caught

matched up?



There are two main impediments in the growth of e-commerce in this sector.

Accepting online payment means sorting out cumbersome regulatory issues. It also

means that a transaction costs 2% to 4% more than usual and this cost has to be

absorbed by the travel agent, not by the end-customer. Agents already work on

thin margins, so few are willing to sacrifice any part of these. However there

are a handful who do encourage customers to pay online.

Can

smaller players adapt to the change?



It is true that some of the changes brought about by technology will take a

while to be adopted across the board. While larger travel companies have been

quick to accept the use of technology, even the smaller ones have realized its

importance in remaining competitive and that is important. When we provide a

technology solution to a travel agency, the computers, software and connectivity

are given free of cost. Our revenue comes from the airlines, not on the travel

agencies. We would expect the agency to conduct business to the tune of 250-300

segments per month.

What

kind of training is required to equip professionals in the travel industry to

use the latest IT apps?



Any training course should impart knowledge about managing databases,

uploading data on to a website and general maintenance of the website. The

technology training required in the travel industry is very generic. Any basic

IT training course available in the market should suffice.

Manjiri Kalghatgi in New Delhi