The Presentation primarily deals with Different Stages of Travel Planning and SWOT analysis of Travel Review Websites in Indian Parlance.

1. Introduction:-
The advent of the Social networking sites and high increase in usage of Internet
via Desktop/ Laptops, Mobiles has brought a revolution in cyberspace. Through
the Internet, individuals can make their thoughts, opinions easily accessible to the
global community of Internet users.
In spite of the increasing importance of online peer-to-peer (P2P) information
exchange, establishing trust, credibility and accuracy of opinions has not been so
populous thing in India. The Great Indian psyche puts online reviewers lower in
credibility and likeability compared to traditional word-of-mouth sources due to
non-face to face interaction.
India, when it comes to travel planning has its unique nature and taste. Here
travel is more of a family affair than isolated decision making and as I always say
“Travel planning is the most essential thing which our country needs because no
demo, no trial packs are available to make sure one gets the optimum value out
of trip each time”.
Inception Planning Execution
The stage where The Stage where The stage where
people decides to people go through people go on the
go on a voyage various online/ trip and replinsh
considering off-line reference themselves.
various factors like checks to plan. Booking and site
time, money and Factor counts here seeing is based on
distance. are Peer reviews, factors like Real
Cost traveler's
Consideration, experience,
Acutal, Conducive Reviews received
and Real Time from trusted
Information about sources and cost -
Destinations, Experience
Properties and optimisation.
Attractions.
Fig.1) Three stages of Any Travel experience

2. Relevance of Travel Planning:-
Any well planned Trip always provides an opportunity to take the optimum value
out of it. As more and more people are opting for Internet for searches for every
field and increase in social media suggest that people are more relying on the on-
line buddy format; the relevance of Travel Planning increase manifold. Here are
some points which could be added to this:-
1. Use of On-line Platforms such as Travel Review (TR) sites helps one to
mitigate the chances of impulse and instinctive choices from where to stay,
where to eat to where to go.
2. Based on the Reviews shared on-line, one can co-relate to the views of the
fellow travellers than reading any expert written column in a magazine or
getting advice from any peer whose choice of staying or going never
matches with one.
3. As said above, in Offline method there can be one way communication
when you can read about a destination but cannot ask any query or get
any response from editors in Real time.
4. Reading Reviews on-line are always more relevant as one can get the
additional information cues like candid photographs added by travellers,
reviews posted by same age group, use of basic language, tone and
without any jargon, Relevance, clarity and practical tips shared by people.
5. Trip planning helps one to evaluate the alternatives available to a place,
reduces the un-certainty factor, saves time and help to explore more.

3. SWOT Analysis of Travel Review
Segment in India:-
Strength
Weakness
Opportunities Threat

4. STRENGTH:-
If we consider any parameter, be its efficiency, productivity or optimum value
proportion, the scope of Travel Review segment is huge in India. People either
wants to go to the familiar places or to the places where any past experience has
been shared by any known person. TripAdvisor.in (TA) is the prominent on-line
Travel Review site which has over 3 mil uniques making it most sought out
website in cyberspace.
Tripadvisor position in India:-
*Data taken from Alexa.com

5. Weakness
1. Weakness in this market is mainly related to the nearly non-presence of
any other alternative website in this segment. The competitive sites are
just having too low market presence to ignore. Even 12k uniques in a
month could result into the number 2 for any website to feature as
second best Travel Review website in India.
Total notable market players in Travel Review segment:-
Depth of Other Market players:-

6. 2. Website has to look for repeat users in a cost affected manner to
maintain the content fresh, lively and up-to-date.
3. Websites rely heavily on Advertisement and the advertising partners’
aptitude to grow the budget over a period of time.
Opportunities
Here lies the importance of having TriporTrap to kick-start the business.
1. UI: - Web in 2012 and ahead is all about clutter free, conducive and
more reach contented as displayed by various other segments of
Industry (Cleartrip, Rediff and Google). TA is still working under its
flagship portal kind of UI and the users are here for information, not for
information maze. Triportrap is using Yii framework which is more
advance as compared to existing market players
2. Market infancy: - Travel review market size being predominantly has
been monopolised by TA, it still has not reached its peak in India.
*http://www.internetworldstats.com/
With 137 mil users in India, this segment needs more market players to act as
forces to expand the market penetration. Competition comes in case of defined

7. market field and when the players have equal ground to provide the services to
the people, considering the under-development and infancy of this niche market
all forces can act as supplier and Demand creators.
3. Growth of Business Segment:- As per Economic Impact of Travel &
Tourism 2012: World Travel & Tourism Council report suggests
“Strongest growth in Travel & Tourism’s direct contribution to GDP will
come from Asia, in particular South Asia (6.7%), driven by India (7.6%)
and Northeast Asia also set to grow by 6.7% (driven by continued
strong growth in China and the recovery of demand in and for Japan)
where rising incomes will generate an increase in domestic tourism
spend and a sharp upturn in capital investment.” In Indian economy,
Tourism accounts for the largest chunk of service Industry. It
contributes 6.23 per cent to tile national GOP and accounts for 8.78 per
cent of tile total employment In India, Statistics show that in 2010, 25.8
million foreign tourists visited India, and revenue generated by tourism
was Pegged at 200 billion US dollars In 2008, This is expected to
increase to US $375.5 billion by 2018 - an annual growth rate of 9.4 pc

8. Threats
Indian consumer behaviour pattern: -
India, unfortunately, has seen OTA (Online Travel Agents) as the end
resolution for booking of any property. OTAs have a simple interface which
shows the one sided communication about the property (like brochures by
hotels in pre year 2000 era) and showcase the price and availability to
book. People considering only price as the deciding factor, book any
property. Though this strategy could help the last minute hotel booking but
for a family trip the planning starts for almost 1-3 months before the actual
trip. (See below the OTA v. TR scenario in India)
Comparison of Dominant OTA website and TR website in India:-

9. Comparison of presence of TR space Vs. OTA domain in India:-