Future of Online Travel in India
The Online Travel sector in India is taking a big leap with MakeMyTrip, Yatra, TravelGuru, ClearTrip and few others already having made their presence felt and lucratively inviting others to join the race of OTA trend.
Online travel sales in India will nearly quadruple to $2 billion in 2010, according to Euromonitor. The online travel market is growing in several Asian countries, thanks to rising Internet use in large cities.
India will be Asia’s fastest growing market for online travel retail by 2010, according to global market analyst Euromonitor International. Other markets topping the table include Vietnam, Hong Kong, Indonesia and China, as online travel retail takes off in Asia.
The online travel retail market in India is expected to boom over the next five years, with Internet-based travel retail transactions increasing by an incredible 271% between 2005 and 2010. Euromonitor International predicts that online travel retail sales generated in India will exceed US$2 billion in 2010 alone.
“High computer ownership rates and large urban populations provide the ideal infrastructure for Internet services,” said Parita Chitakasem of Euromonitor. “With double-digit growth forecast in the number of urban households between 2006 and 2010, India is showing great potential for online businesses and as a result, great potential for online travel retail.”
New baby-boomer market emerges for online travel retailers
In its report, Abacus emphasised that there are currently around 62,000 physical travel agencies in Asia, up from around 52,000 in 2003 according to Euromonitor. Offline travel sales make up a healthy 89% (or US$218 billion) of the total Asia Pacific travel market, compared to the 11% (US$26 billion) gained in online sales, according to 2007 projections from EyeforTravel Research.
“This is no reason for the region’s traditional travel agents to be complacent however. The offline share of the travel market has been growing at just 2.3% CAGR from 2002-2007, compared to the bounding 49% CAGR recorded by online sales over the same period (EyeForTravel). Despite this rapid growth, Abacus estimates that less than half the region’s current travel agents have any web presence at all and fewer than 10% have websites with real-time transaction facilities,” stated Abacus in a release.
But with online travel bookings in Asia Pacific projected to grow from US$15.9 billion in 2005 to US$55 billion by 2010 (EyeForTravel, The Asia Pacific Online Travel Report 2007), traditional travel agencies who ignore the changes heralded by Travel 2.0 are playing with fire.
“Travel is an emotional decision, so having a human contact makes an important difference. Many people feel more secure when dealing with a real person, a real agent,” says Don Birch, Abacus President and CEO
Euromonitor International also predicts that online travel companies in Asia will benefit from a recent shift in demographic usage of the Internet, to increasingly include older travellers. The over-65 generation in Asia is becoming more adept at using the Internet and as such, they should be a target consumer group for all online travel companies, particularly as over 65s typically have high disposable income levels to spend on expensive or long-awaited holidays.
At present, Japan is leading the way by offering Internet services tailored to its ageing population. Euromonitor’s Chitakasem comments, “In Japan, there has been a rise in computer schools that cater specifically for people over 60, plus a growing number of websites aimed at senior bloggers. Although it is only early days in Asia for this emerging trend, it is clearly not a development to be ignored”.
References:
http://www.hotelmarketing.com
http://travelstartups.com
http://www.phocuswright.com
http://www.euromonitor.com
State of Online Travel Industry in India
The growth in the online travel industry is not surprising, given that the country’s online population totals 25 million currently, and is projected to cross 100 million mark by 2008.
Online travel sector growth in India was established and driven by Indian Railways, and the second phase of growth was lead by airlines, predominantly Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) like Air Deccan, Spicejet and Kingfisher. This is also a major driver of online travel bookings in other Asian countries. LCCs in India today channel over 60% of their business through their own supplier-direct websites. Online hotel bookings are predicted to grow rapidly in the next 5 years, and on Online Travel Agent (OTA) sites. In fact it’s predicted hotel distribution will grow from 45% to 56% via intermediaries by 2010 in Asia Pacific. In India, the figures are even more dramatic, with growth predicted to grow from 35% (2005) distribution via OTAs today, to 57% by 2010.
Not only are hotels a relative latecomer online, but OTAs themselves represent the third phase of online development as the market matures. Today OTA sales account for less than 16% of the total online travel market.
The scope for growth in online travel sector is immense. While more than 65% of the tickets are sold online in the US, online sales account for less than 10% in Asia Pacific.
Google Crawls 1 Trillion URLs
Post Excerpts form Google’s Official Blog
We’ve known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we’ve seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there. Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big the web is these days — when our systems that process links on the web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!
The web has been growing - faster and even faster. Several thousand domains being registered every day, another several million content pages being posted everyday. How much of web URLs this would add up on the web?
The web world is vast. Information being loaded everyday on the web pages. But the question is about the legitimity of the information being flooded. How much of this content is worthwhile and unique?
Points of Concern
1. How much of the content on the web is duplicate?
Image a same news being published on several news websites. The same news being again republished by several other website owners (either through RSS feed or other mediums)
2. How legitimate the information is?
The advent of blogs has flooded the internet with new webpages as blog enable a normal non-technical person to write a web page. Anyone can write a web page now!
Monitising Google Adsense
Updated: 11 Jul 2008
Google has recently announced the retirement of Google Adsense Referral Ads late Aug 2008. Adsense Referral Ads may not have monetized much for Google.
When it comes to Google Adsense, majority of publishers only use Adsense for Content. A few others use Adsense for Search. Lately, Google introduced “Referral Ads” with Google Adsense where the Publishers get paid only when the user performs the desired action i.e. generates a lead or completes a purchase as defined by the advertiser.
Why Referral Ads
Since Referral Ads are based on per Action basis, the returns per action are high ranging from 50 cents to $20 or more.
Who should use Google Referral Ads?
If you know your website users well- their demographics and psychographics; you can monitise well with Referral Ads. Select the relevant advertisers and categories for display with Referral Ads and place them at prominent place on your website.
FAQs for Referral Ads
How much will I earn from referrals?
Your earnings for referrals will vary depending on the product you’re referring. They may also depend the location of the user you’ve referred.
For non-Google products, each individual advertiser decides the actions they’d like users to complete on their site and how much they’re willing to pay for those actions. You can view the amount of this payment displayed on the product details page for each product. For every action the advertiser has defined, you’ll see your potential earnings listed in the Payment column.
You’ll be credited for non-Google referrals if a user who clicked on your ad completes the advertiser’s conversion criteria within 30 days of clicking.
Why am I not earning my maximum referral value?
When you first begin displaying referral ads, you may notice that the earnings you receive for an ad are less than the maximum referral value displayed for the referral. This is because initially, advertisers will only be asked to pay the minimum referral value as Google monitors your account data to determine that the conversions generated are valid. Once the validation period ends, your earnings will reflect the maximum value of the conversions as disclosed going forward. We’ve put these safeguards in place to make the referrals network more appealing to advertisers, therefore bringing more quality inventory and greater potential revenue to publishers.
When will I earn my maximum referral value?
Google will use your site’s activity history to determine if you are delivering valid conversions. Once we have sufficient data to ensure that advertisers are receiving valid conversions from your site, you will start receiving the maximum value of future referrals.
For example, let’s say you choose an ad with a minimum referral value of $3.00 and a maximum referral value of $10.00. You will earn $3 for conversions during the validation period. Once the validation process is over, the maximum referral value of $10.00 will be applied to future conversions.
For most publishers, the validation period should end quickly, but it will vary by publisher due to differences in the time it takes to collect the necessary account data. You’ll know the validation period has ended when your earnings for a referral ad reflect the maximum referral value displayed in the product details page for that ad.
How do I add a referral to my site?
To create a new referral unit and add it to your site, please follow these steps:
1. Sign in to your AdSense account at www.google.com/adsense.
2. Visit the AdSense Setup tab and choose Referrals as the product.
3. Choose your referral locale by picking a location and language in which your site’s visitors will most often view your ads.
4. Find ads that are appropriate for your site in one of two ways:
- Search or browse for products and services that you would like to display on your site. Remember, you don’t have to pick just one; you can pick multiple ads that we’ll automatically rotate based on performance.
- Alternatively, choose your referral units based on keywords you select, allowing you to take advantage of any ads that are later added to our system matching those words.
5. Choose your category, keyword, or product. What’s the difference?
6. Pick from available ad formats.
7. Select a color palette for text ads, and a custom channel if you wish.
8. Copy and paste the referral code from the Your AdSense code box into the HTML source code of your site.
The referral button you’ve added should begin appearing on your page in moments.
For more information on getting started with Referral Ads, please visit Quick Start Guide
Generating revenue from your website
Did you know that your personal website or blog can return you handsome revenues?
The popularity and easy-to-use interface of blogs have attracted millions of people to write blog and share their knowledge and experiences over the internet. While it will bring you recognizance through your blog articles, some sort of advertising options can shed you considerable revenues too.
Google Adsense has been the most popular advertising options for majority of the website/blog owners. The reason being contextual advertising that serves ads relevant to the content of your website pages. The other reason opting for Google Adsense is the reliability and timely payment.
Besides Google Adsense, Affiliate Ads can also give higher returns. While Google Adsense program is generally based on Cost Per Click (CPC) basis (though CPM- Cost Per Thousand Impressions and CPA- Cost Per Action is also there), the Affiliate ads are based on CPA only but give higher returns as compared to Google Adsense.
Some of the popular Contextual Ad Networks:
1. Google Adsense
2. Yahoo Publisher Network
3. AD Brite
4. Chitika
