Have you heard of Lachen or Lachung? Or Tarkarli? No? You’re not alone. The first two are being promoted as tourist destinations in Sikkim, and the other is a beach in coastal Maharashtra. Along with other places in the North-East, sub-Himalayan hill stations such as Lansdowne (Uttarakhand) and lesser-known places such as Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, they are some of the emerging holiday destinations in India. Leh, once considered remote both in maps and minds, in fact, has become one of the top 50 destinations on travel portal HolidayIQ.com, whose focus is the Indian traveller.
Ask Hari Nair, founder and CEO of HolidayIQ.com, how his venture is different from other travel sites, and he tells you that the focus is completely on Indian travellers. “We’re a review site – the only Indian one – and not a transaction site. Our focus is on information, particularly that given by other travellers,” he says. TripAdvisor.com, Lonelyplanet.com and Virtualtourist.com are other such portals.
A lot of Indian travellers are at an “early stage of evolution” and the question, ‘where do we go?’ crops up quite often. HolidayIQ.com offers 1,200 choices as of now. Second, transport in India is very complex. Not all destinations are a direct/non-stop trip away. There are trains and planes to board and alight and buses and taxis to be taken. Figuring out how to reach a place from your own town or city is a big deal. Nair says the ‘How to Reach’ section lets tourists share information precisely about this and gets one million visits every month. Similar sites do not have a dedicated section for destination reviews, they only have hotel reviews, he claims.
Next, Indians want Indians’ perspective about hotels, whether in India or abroad. “Some may be more welcoming of Indians than others,” says Nair, adding that Indians might favour some hotels’ facilities over others. For instance, if you’re going to Singapore and cannot do without Indian breakfasts and others meals, you can look for views on places which will serve you those.
HolidayIQ has another initiative: It is giving out hiq!Pads, Android tablets branded with its name, to hotels all over the country. Guests are encouraged to rate these hotels as they leave and the ratings are uploaded on the portal. It is looking at covering 5,000 hotels in three years. How can one be sure the ratings are genuine? Only after the rating is validated by the guest through an email will it be uploaded, says Nair. For hotels, the number of reviews count. It’s important that they get feedback, which is not easy once the guest leaves and gets back to the daily grind. The hiq!Pad triggers this process as the willingness to rate and the acuity of opinion is intact just as they are leaving the hotel, he explains.
ATTACHED BEACH
The discussion on hotels leads to some interesting insights. For Indian tourists, hotels are sanctuaries. Compared with tourists in other countries, Indians spend a lot more time inside their hotel – there are few outdoor activities, though this will change in the next ten years. And an “attached beach” is important – reviews across HolidayIQ use this phrase, much like ‘attached bathroom’ or ‘2 BHK’ – a subliminal display of priority, says Nair.
In keeping with the Indians-for-Indians theme, Nair does not believe in editing the language on this portal where the content is largely user-generated. He believes this makes it more authentic and establishes a comfort factor with users and visitors. Travellers’ photos, narrations and reviews crowd the site.
Content, Nair says, is the next big thing online. “So far, it has been e-commerce. In the next 3-4 years, it will all be about content,” he says. Research and buying has moved online but there’s a gap in the content that helps people make decisions about what to buy. That’s a big trend abroad and is moving into India too.
Private equity firms Accel and Tiger have funded HolidayIQ.com, which Nair set up in 2006. Once a partner at KPMG, he quit a long career in management consulting to become a tourism entrepreneur as he was passionate about travelling. The site makes its money through the pay-per-search and pay-per-lead models. Online agents for hotels, such as makemytrip.com, hotels.com or cleartrip, pay HolidayIQ when someone looks up accommodation through these sites. Travel agents pay when visitors look for package tours. HolidayIQ also lets hotels advertise on its site.