With domestic travel booming, Cleartrip sees ‘tremendous potential’ for tours & activities

One of the biggest problems in the fast-growing market of tours & activities is ‘bookability’.

As Alex Kremer, co-founder of Actourex, a platform to help attractions and resellers issue and accept mobile and electronic tickets, pointed out last week, the reason is structural. Kremer is quoted saying that “the back-end plumbing for suppliers to effectively distribute their products through third parties is still fairly lacking”.

In other words, booking and fulfillment tends to happen offline.

“The major problem so far has been the discoverability and ‘bookability’ of these experiences online,” says Anand Kandadai, Executive Vice President, Mobile Business Solutions, Cleartrip.“ Indeed, there is no single credible place on the web that aggregates experiences and serves those to the consumers on a platter.”

To solve this problem Cleartrip has recently launched a product coined ‘Activities’ to address what it sees as two major challenges. They are:

• Fragmentation: Getting a fragmented and disorganised market of industry players and service providers to make the required technological and cultural changes
• Consumer behaviour: Converting consumers who have become used to browsing countless websites to discover an activity or experience and then ringing the service provider to book

 “Both these are behavioral changes that will require a paradigm shift and would happen gradually over time,” says Kandadai.

Drilling down

So what is ‘Activities’?

In what the company is calling an ‘industry first’, forthe first time in India travellers can now browse and book interesting experiences, from a collection of over 2000 activities, across 30 cities spanning both metros and tourist destinations. Among the 150 themes available are: culinary classes, food walks, Segway tours, luxury bike rentals, yachting, go-karting, hiking and kids and more. 

Importantly, all are discoverable and bookable online across all the company’s apps for iOS, Android and Windows.

“We make sure we only onboard activities and experiences, that are completely bookable online. Our backend product has been built in a way that it ensures every nuance of the activity's functional aspect is taken care of and can be listed online, seamlessly,” says Kandadai. 

Meeting the demands of a discerning audience

The demand for travel in India is there.

As EyeforTravel’s recent Half-Year Round-Up and Forecast 2015 highlights, domestic travel continues to be by far the dominant form of tourism for Indians and is experiencing strong growth. In 2014, the Indian Ministry of Tourism estimates that the number of domestic tourism visits rose by 11.9% to 1.282 billion. What is more, these high growth rates appear to be continuing into 2015. IATA’s monthly traffic figures note that the number of domestic flights in India grew by 16.3% in the 12 months to June 2015. 

All this combined with a more discerning and demanding Indian consumer bodes well for growth in tours and activities.

“Today travellers [in India] are more exposed, more individualistic and more heterogeneous in their demands and expectations. So the days of one-size-fits-all packages are over,” says Kandadai.

As a result, the market for standalone tours and activities has started to pick-up as it is driven more by consumer choice and less by pre-defined packages. The growth of mobile in India is another driver. There were 26 million new subscribers in the first quarter of 2015, helping to make travellers more impatient; they want instant gratification and they want it at their fingertips.

With growing disposable incomes, better education and upward economic mobility, India is poised to become one of the largest markets for on-demand activities and things to do.

We firmly believe that India as a market, is at an inflection point when it comes to the vertical of activities

“We firmly believe that India as a market, is at an inflection point when it comes to the vertical of activities and things to do, and the trends we’re seeing prove just that,” Kandadai stresses.  

A mentioned earlier, a major challenge is fragmentation and little if any technology infrastructure. So Cleartrip has set out to commoditise offerings and bring pricing and inventory management seamlessly online.

“Since there was no auto-correct mechanism when we launched, ensuring price parity was one of our main challenges,” explains Kandadai.

The business model and the future

Cleartrip does not divulge what commission it charges service providers on each transaction but says it is ‘nominal’.  Another plus is that service providers are not hit with joining and subscription fees, annual maintenance charges and so on.

Cleartrip sees “tremendous potential in India” and will continue to build in depth executable content for each of the cities that it is offering ‘activities’ in. It will also continue “to increase the breadth of destinations as we go”.

Two other issues Cleartrip sees as ripe for picking are in making content relevant and personal for consumers as possible. And as people begin to discover and book the activities on the platform the data will be there to do it.

Cleartrip certainly seems committed to a bold foray into an as yet unexplored space.

In 2016 EyeforTravel will be running a major conference in Asia. Check out Smart Traveller Asia: Digital Strategies Revealed which will take place in Hong Kong (Jan 26-27)