On the day Google, Jet Airways and ibiboGroup launched the Flight Search feature in India, that promised to make the experience of travel seamless, faster and easier, Cleartrip looked to add ‘perspective’ to the product keeping the reality in India in mind.
Here are some points highlighted by Subramanya Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer at Cleartrip:
1. We think this will have limited success in the Indian market, as the consumer pricing on the air market is fairly homogenous across airlines & OTAs. Also, most of the trusted OTA service brands are not present in the Google Fight search product and hence the service outcomes for consumers might be different from what they have experienced so far.
2. At a product experience level, there are still some gaps
a. India is mainly low cost carrier model, and many airlines like AirAsia, Air Costa etc.. are missing.
b. India is also a point to point pricing market. E.g “Consumer can pick Indigo on one leg and Spicejet on another”. In this product, the consumer is forced to pick the same airline on both legs for LCC’s. So might have repercussions on pricing.
3. From an advertiser standpoint, there are long term cost implications participating in a platform such as this. The cost of acquisition will be far higher in a meta marketing model as compared to a distribution model.
4. Four years ago, people termed it as OTA killer wherever it launched. But nothing has changed – interface, market share etc has pretty much remained the same.
14/01/15 Financial Express
Here are some points highlighted by Subramanya Sharma, Chief Marketing Officer at Cleartrip:
1. We think this will have limited success in the Indian market, as the consumer pricing on the air market is fairly homogenous across airlines & OTAs. Also, most of the trusted OTA service brands are not present in the Google Fight search product and hence the service outcomes for consumers might be different from what they have experienced so far.
2. At a product experience level, there are still some gaps
a. India is mainly low cost carrier model, and many airlines like AirAsia, Air Costa etc.. are missing.
b. India is also a point to point pricing market. E.g “Consumer can pick Indigo on one leg and Spicejet on another”. In this product, the consumer is forced to pick the same airline on both legs for LCC’s. So might have repercussions on pricing.
3. From an advertiser standpoint, there are long term cost implications participating in a platform such as this. The cost of acquisition will be far higher in a meta marketing model as compared to a distribution model.
4. Four years ago, people termed it as OTA killer wherever it launched. But nothing has changed – interface, market share etc has pretty much remained the same.
14/01/15 Financial Express
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