Face-to-Face: Rajiv Mehrotra, Director of Product Development – India, Tourico Holidays
Contributors are not employed, compensated or governed by TD, opinions and statements are from the contributor directly
Face-to-Face
RajivMehrotra, Director of Product Development – India,
TouricoHolidays
1. What are some of the services offered by your company? What is yourclientele like? Who are you aiming for?
Tourico Holidays, a subsidiary of TravelHoldings Inc., is a global wholesale travel broker offering a global inventoryof 15,000 merchant hotel agreements, cruises, flights, vacation package, carrental, attractions and transfers to clients in over 100 countries. We operateand maintain global websites and online interfaces that supply a largediversity of travel sellers.
Since 1998, Tourico Holidays steadily increasedfrom 190,000 passengers annually to over 2 million passengers travelling toover 1,500 destinations.
A steadfast focus on availability, rates, technologyand service has enabled Tourico Holidays to double in size every year of itsoperation.
2. Can you elaborate on yourhost-to-host connections?
Regarding host-to-host connections (H2H),Tourico Holidays currently connects to almost 500 clients around the worldthrough seamless XML connectivity. With our dedicated, professional serviceengineer team, Tourico Holidays utilized a client’s existing booking engine toprovide clients with direct access to our entire hotel inventory. BecauseTourico Holidays operates in over 100 countries, we are able to provide hotelswith incremental business and reduced seasonality - Italians don’t takevacations the same time as Brazilians and thus reaching everyone, everywhere,anytime.
3. What trends have you seenin the Indian travel industry?
We entered India around 1998, and thepotential here is huge. Some trends we are seeing is a consistently increasinglead time and average stay (Lead time/Ave Stay: 2004: 14/2.57 days,2006:22/2.92 days, 2008:31/3.22 days). These are very encouraging trends forTourico Holidays. We view this as a clear sign that we are increasinglybecoming a preferred supplier for wholesalers and tour operators including theregional ones, who promote Indiaand additionally, travelers into this region are spending more days, andtherefore, more money per transaction.
4. India has seen a stumbling block withshortage of rooms in the recent past. How do you plan on handling this ifquestioned by your clients?
On the contrary, more and more hotels arecoming forward to make use of this medium to have better control over theirinventory and pricing, unlike earlier when they traditionally sold to DMC’s andOverseas Tour Operators. Recession also had huge impact resulting theturn-around. With newer hotel projects coming up adding large inventories indemand cities, overall inventory situation has and will improve further.
The flexibility that we offer to have fullcontrol over their inventory and pricing also had a convincing impact on oursuppliers.
5. What are some near futureplans?
Tourico Holidays main product focus is tocontinue to grow its base of pre-bought room blocks. Tourico Holidays formsstrategic alliances with A-list hotels by purchasing pre-paid room blocks withrates exclusive to its client base, along with limited to no blackout dates.Hoteliers receive guaranteed revenue for their committed room blocks andspecial recognition of their partnership throughout www.TouricoHolidays.comand our other marketing efforts. We have branded these 250 and growing hotelsas Exclusive Deals. Besides, weare really taking a hard look at the Far East, India,China, Thailand, Australia and more.
For India we aim to touch 10,000 roomnights a year benchmark during 2009-10.
Comments are closed.