MakeMyTrip, Indiatimes Travel Try The Offline Option
A report in the Economic Times mentions more Online Ticketing Agents (OTA) going offline. Makemytrip has set up a counter at retail store Spencers to sell tickets. They’d done a similar pilot with Subhiksha earlier this year. I’m just wondering if a full fledged rollout of such an intitiative is commercially viable, given the limited margins that OTAs get – is it just a means of promoting the site? Since the story was carried by ET, the publication also reports that Indiatimes Travel is looking to tie-up with retail chains for selling flight tickets at cash counters, with an additional software. How about ticketing kiosks…too expensive?
Hi Nikhil,
I would say its pure marketing.Couple of days back, I had gone to buy myself a pair of goggles from titan.I got in return a scratch card from Zapak.com, which would allow me to download a game after I log in to their site, after creating a user ID.( a way to increase user base).
if you talk about mmt, it's becoming a household name in the OTA domain.something like you going out to buy a bottle of mineral water and end up saying.."ek bisleri dena".you buy kingfisher or some other brand, but you still say bisleri,( as if the definition of mineral water is bisleri.)
the OTA market is huge in India and is predicted to become $2 Biilion by 2008. i would say mmt is vying to take a big piece of this pie.at the same time making local travel agents defunct.
I guess not many people would actually go for buying tickets in retail stores,at this point of time in India.
i think customers always get benefits by these new innovations and i welcome this.