BWDisrupt interacted with Kapil Goswami, the Founder of Bigbreaks an online travel agency that started this yearIn the space of the last few years, Online travel agencies have completely changed the way people plan and book their travel, and have made planning as well as booking far more convenient for travelers. Bigbreaks.com began life during early 2016, and while we are an Online travel company too, the whole concept of the venture was to arrange a perfect marriage between Online and Offline travel, and offer the traveler the important 3 C’s, Choice, Customizability and Convenience.
Being a veteran in the Travel and Tourism Industry, with over 30 years of experience in the Offline Travel world , the founder Kapil Goswamy having owned and managed a 100 crore brick and mortar travel business, had been studying the Online Travel model for the last few years, and found that there were a lot of glitches and pain points in the current Online models.
Customization of Holiday packages was a big one. Standard travel packages offered by travel agencies often fail to meet personalized needs and expectations of clients. What if on a four-day trip to Kerala a customer wants to cover Kovalam along with Munnar and Alappuzha, and the travel agency offering standardized packages tells him that their travel package can accommodate only two destinations? What if a client has an elderly family member traveling on the trip and needs a separate activity guide to suit the elderly?
This lack of customized planning and guidance spurred Kapil Goswamy to launch BigBreaks.com, an online travel agency that promises to personalize travel and holidays to the last detail.
There were already over a dozen online travel companies, some of which are well-established names. However, Goswamy believed that there was still plenty of room for new entrants, who could gauge the lacunae, learn from mistakes of others and offer services, which fill in those existing gaps and provide customers unique and personalized travel experiences.
Bootstrapped and completely funded by internal accruals. While the sale of Domestic and International Air Tickets will continue to be the revenue leader for some time, it is the sale of Holiday packages , both Domestic and International , which will be our prime profit center in the days to come. More and more Indians are taking holidays, both within India and abroad, and this is a upward trend likely to continue for the next several years with the rising middle and upper class.
From less than 100 online flight related transactions during the month of our launch (January 2016) we are now recording over 1000 transactions per month. In addition , the holidays segment of our business continues to grow on a month on month basis.
In the immediate future, BigBreaks hopes to launch its Mobile Apps, for both Android and IOS platforms, and add Railways and Cruising to their product portfolio.
Being a bootstrapped and self funded venture, our Marketing does not stretch to having full page advertisements in National dailies , and our cash burn on customer acquisition is extremely low. In addition to advertising in the Travel supplements of a few chosen Newspapers, we are relying heavily on digital platforms and social media to gain greater traction. Our plans for the next 6 to 12 months include in addition to Newspapers and Social Media advertising , regular Newsletters to our growing customer base promoting tactical offers etc.
For targeting a more niche audience of HNI’s and well traveled people, we are also looking to sponsor a couple of Golf Tournaments and other Sporting Events at some of the leading Clubs. On the digital front, we hope to launch our own Loyalty program too.
The transition has been smooth mainly because we did our homework quite well before transitioning to the online space. In fact, we conducted a close study to understand the problems that clients experience while dealing with online travel agencies.
The internet and mobile ticketing business has been increasing at a rate of over 20% per annum in the last few years. Online medium is the future, but currently I would say both online and offline spaces are co-existing peacefully and catering to their own clientele.
According to the reports online travel market in India is a booming industry, crossing 50,000 crore in 2015 and growing at a double digit rate.
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Soumya is a young writer and journalist, with bachelors in Multimedia and Mass Communication. She is an alumini of the Asian College of Journalism, and finds politics and sustainability intriguing beats to work with.
