Is it possible to enter the online travel market nowadays?

The travelling market nowadays, with support from modern technology, is developed to the new level where anyone can easily plan and travel by themselves. Online booking via mobile application or website instead of contacting travelling agencies help the travelling business quickly develop as you may think that the travelling application market is the red ocean already.

Is it true? Should you reconsider to start or improve your travelling business with an application? Do you have a chance for the market with a lot of travelling application nowadays? Please read this article first, then you will have your own answer.

Online travel market nowadays

There are two big players currently in the online travelling market now,  Expedia, Inc. and the Priceline Group, which own almost popular travelling websites and mobile applications as Booking.com, Kayak, Hotels.com, Trivago. Continuously, these two brands are considered as one of the top OTAs in the market and trusted by a large number of users.

With a database of over 4 million listings hotel, the support of multiple global distribution systems (GDS) as Amadeus, Sabre, Worldspan, to book air ticket, hotels, renting cars, cruises, as well as other travelling services.

In the past, these agencies can make a lot of money from commission collecting from booking e-ticket, hotel booking service. As nowadays air ticket can sell directly to their customers via their website or applications, the differentiation between two services forces agencies like Expedia and Price line to remove the excessed fee. Therefore, the major revenue now comes from selling hotel reservations.

By providing a platform with independent comments and reviews by customers, the OTAs still can gain revenue from their business, normally the OTA may apply three business model: Agency model, Merchant model, and Advertising model.

The agency model plays the role of a middleman between a service provider and end-users, while they earn money off the difference between the providers’ price and end-users’ price.

Another model which allows OTA to buy a large number of rooms in the cost of wholesales and then selling at the rate of retails. Then the difference will be their revenue. This model is more popular and a favourite method of many OTAs as the revenue it brings to.

The last one, the advertising method which TripAdvisor is driven by it, earns revenue from selling advertising and payment per click.

So, after checking the market around, what do you think about your planning to the online travelling market? Let’s check some strategy that you may apply for a successful plan. 

Starting as an online travel agent

The first and basic step to starting your online travelling business it is your own weapons including website and mobile application. Yes, to bring the most convenient to attract customers, your website and mobile application should be easy to use and good-looking enough. This depends on the UX and UI of an application and website. More importantly, branding should be unified through website and application to build trust to customers.

Even you outsource an experienced software development team to build up your website and mobile application, it will be valueless if no one knows about the existence of your business. Then the affiliate program is born, which is the best way to branding your service and business. Affiliating with some big brand names in the market as Booking.com, TripAdvisor, Agoda… can help your business quickly collect a large number of databases. It is an effective way of support each other, as even many big guys cannot cover the whole market, there are still some places that they don’t have any information, and they have to affiliate with other OTA to better support customers.

Now you see your strategy? Yes, concentrating on a niche market, which can be your unique selling point to start the business. It will help you become valuable when connecting with some big brands and also provide you targeted customers to better developing your business.

We cannot deny the development of the online travelling market nowadays, however, it still has some channel which business owners can jump into and develop their own business. Because your own weapons (website and application) can be the key to jump to the crowded market, please remember to choose the right development strategy and unique software development team to support you.

You also can contact us, Adamo Software to get more advice in both the market and the application process. We always ready to share with you our experience and consult you as much as possible.