Tag Archives: Factual state of the travel fraternity

Modi Ji… have you really understood the problems of our travel industry? Time to dive into the problems and turbulences industry has faced in the last 15 Years. There is no doubt that this government is proactive and quick at decision making, Trying to bring in a positive change but things have certainly gone wrong somewhere for our already suffering travel industry especially for offline players. Perhaps this government hasn’t done deep research on this industry and taken one-sided decisions and damaged it more. You would ask How? Let’s look back and evaluate a bit. Abolishment of IATA commissions by most of the Airlines (2001Onwards) Travel agents were paid 9% commission till 2000. From 2001 the commission was reduced to 7%. In May 2005, the commission was reduced to 5%. In November same year, 16 airlines cut the commission to zero, a move followed by others. In December 2008, the commission was rolled back to 3% by Indian carriers Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines, which is now defunct. Subsequently, others followed suit, and now airlines have again reduced it to 1%.  This was probably the first a big blow to our tourism industry as these commissions were a major source of their incomes. Information Source: Economic Times http://bit.ly/39ELDtF OTA & Other Intermediaries predatory pricing, w major disruptor (2006 Onwards) Biggest change, biggest disruption. The Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) have been one major disruptor to online distribution but other intermediaries have also come along and have further impacted the industry, such as Google, Facebook, Trip Advisor, metasearch sites and Airbnb. Tourism business which was synonyms to service-oriented experience has now become a commodity. Even the hoteliers are presented with …

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