A discussion about the software industry and their coders

This post by Guest Author on TheBizofCoding : Monica Jasuja 

With the huge explosion in the Indian air space and with the advent of “so-called” low cost airlines what has emerged is the war among the travel services portals. Yet, even with increased competition there are several sites that are not that easy to use. Before I embark on my desired feature list let us look at the playing field:

From the advertising on tv and elsewhere, the ones the most "visible" and newer players which are in landgrab mode are:

l     Makemytrip.com

l     Yatra.com

l     Cleartrip.com

l     Travelguru.com

The older players in this space are:

l     Indiatimes travel

l     Rediff Air fare search

I know from my own usage that Makemytrip.com has had a huge makeover definitely making it much more usable. Yatra.com has had its teething troubles making results available (as described in my comment to a post here) and of course new features have been added to make the portal more complete and offer the user all possible travel options-flight, rail, even bus bookings along with hotel bookings and travel packages(both international and national)

Stats seem to suggest that Makemytrip.com is miles ahead of all its competitors, But, being an aware consumer (have learnt tremendously from the “grahak jago” campaign), I feel that the value differentiators between all of these portals from a consumer point of view are very few and the gimmicks and ad campaigns don’t really attract me as a consumer or make me loyal enough to only buy from one portal.

IMHO here are some notable features missing on these sites:

• Allow the user to filter the results displayed based on one or a combination of parameters integral to the decision making process such as: time of departure, number of halts, total time for travel include stop-over times.
• A new search has to be conducted each time parameters of the booking change ex: time, destination, date etc (Cleartrip is an exception, however, the options available in the drop down lists make me wonder if it’s a time period of departure or a simple approximation?)
• Users have absolutely no idea that a fees will be charged by the portal for the booking and if a fees is incurred for booking on the portal instead of directly on the airlines website
• Lowest fare finders to ease booking for fare-sensitive consumers aren’t available: Southwest.com does an excellent job of this and even our desi GoAir provides this here
• The Mobile VAS space is crowded with providers offering consumers virtually everything from paying their utility bills to booking tickets (cinema and even flight tickets). However, none of these portals advertise the available service on offer in premium retail space on their homepage. This could be because mobile payments is in its infancy or because the service itself is limited to fare/ticket search with bookings to be made by calling Customer Service. Jet Airways has partnered with Hutch for Jetwallet which seems to be the only Mobile Ticketing application available.
• Frequent flier programs are offered by only the major airlines with low-cost carriers refraining from their usage owing to the high operating costs and low margins. But even while booking a ticket with Jet/Indian, there is no way for a buyer to provide a frequent flier number which ensures that the miles earned from the trip get accrued to his/her account
• Customer Loyalty Programs and ensuring returning customers seem to have been totally de-proritized in the scheme to become bigger and higher revenue generating as compared to competitors.
• Becoming a registered user doesn’t offer any benefits than going through the booking process as a guest. Getting offers and promotional fliers (that can be easily be ignored) maybe the only motivation for making your email address available to the portals