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For Immediate Release | Official News Wire for the Travel Industry

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Indian travelers expected to spend $136 billion by 2021

April 24, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

The Indian traveler has come of age, spending approximately $94 billion in 2018, on around 2 billion domestic and international trips, helping the Indian travel and tourism industry achieve unprecedented scale.

The momentum is expected to continue and the industry will grow at a 13 percent CAGR to $136 billion by 2021, according to a report, ‘How Does India Travel’. The report outlines how India spends on travel, the influence of online channels in their purchase journey and potential growth opportunities for travel businesses till 2021.

Deep diving into the $136 billion spends, the report cites a 12 percent growth in transportation ($50 billion), 13 percent growth in lodging ($21 billion) and consumption, which includes spends on shopping, recreation and food, to grow at 13 percent ($65 billion) over the next three years. Additionally, as more people come online, smartphone penetration improves and use of digital payments goes up, the report estimates that Indian travelers will spend an additional $24 billion on online travel bookings over the next three years, a growth from 25 percent in 2018 to 35 percent in 2021.

Online is a significant source of research

Elucidating the planning journey of Indian travelers, both for business and leisure, the report calls out five phases of a customer journey – Interest, Research, Booking, Experience and Sharing. The report states that during key research-heavy phase of interest, research and experience, digital plays a pivotal role with over 86 percent of consumers being influenced by online channels. During this phase, travelers spend their maximum time on search, travel tour provider websites, price comparison websites, and travel articles. Online video too plays a significant role with 21 percent of travelers being influenced by this platform. In the booking and sharing phase, the report states that nearly 60 percent of customers book transport and lodging online, and over 50 percent share feedback online with social media being the dominant platform.

Talking about the market opportunities for online travel players, Vikas Agnihotri, Country Director – Sales, Google India said, “New users perceive that online channels are geared towards the more frequent flyers and experience-oriented travellers; and existing travelers research online but the lack of trust in payments and booking experience make them end up booking offline. If travel players tap these online users through personalised marketing, messaging and travel plans, they can further augment online travel bookings. This can be done by adopting digital technologies to influence customers early in the journey and moving from one-time engagement to ongoing relationships to have a positive impact.”

“There is a perception amongst consumers that online channels are geared towards premium customers, along with a marked distrust around payment and pricing terms. It is imperative for businesses to address these concerns in order to effectively tap into the growing base of users.” Arpan Sheth, partner Bain & Company said.

Decoding the Indian travelers

The report further identified the five cohorts of travelers in India, across business and leisure travel, and categorised each against their online research behavior:

Frequent flyers: Nearly 70 percent of them booked online, cumulatively spent $17 billion in 2018. They make their choices based on convenience, availability, brand preference and past experiences.

Budget business traveler: 86 percent of them researched online whereas only 60 percent book online, cumulatively spent $20 billion in 2018. This cohort makes their decisions based on cost of travel, availability and consultation amongst their personal business network.

Experience-oriented traveler: Around 70 percent of their bookings were done online and cumulatively spent $22 billion in 2018. They extensively research both online and offline for ‘authentic’ experiences and convenience of options; display high loyalty towards preferred brand of airlines or hotels and actively share experiences.

Budget group traveler: 90 percent researched online and 55 percent booked online, cumulatively spent $29 billion in 2018. They make multiple decision-makers in the process and take the final decisions based on minimal cost.

Occasional travel visiting friends/relatives: 92 percent researched online but only 60 percent booked online, spent $6 billion in 2018. They maximize family convenience within a budget and believe online terms and conditions are restrictive.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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How does India travel? Let us count the 94 billion ways

April 17, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

Bain & Company and Google India are together launching a report on “How Does India Travel.” According to the report, the Indian traveler has come of age, spending approximately $94 billion in 2018 on around 2 billion domestic and international trips. This has helped the Indian travel and tourism industry achieve unprecedented scale, and the momentum is expected to continue with the industry growing at a 13 percent CAGR to $136 billion by 2021, according to a report.

Fueled by digital, Indian travelers are expected to spend an additional $24 billion on online travel bookings over the next 3 years. The report outlines how India spends on travel, the influence of online channels in their purchase journey, and potential growth opportunities for travel businesses until 2021.

Deep diving into the $136 billion spends, the report cites a 12 percent growth in transportation ($50 billion), 13 percent growth in lodging ($21 billion) and consumption, which includes spends on shopping, recreation and food, to grow at 13 percent ($65 billion) over the next three years. Additionally, as more people come online, smartphone penetration improves and use of digital payments goes up, the report estimates that Indian travelers will spend an additional $24 billion on online travel bookings over the next three years, a growth from 25 percent in 2018 to 35 percent in 2021.

Online is a significant source of research

Elucidating the planning journey of Indian travelers, both for business and leisure, the report calls out five phases of a customer journey – Interest, Research, Booking, Experience and Sharing.  The report states that during key research-heavy phase of interest, research and experience, digital plays a pivotal role with over 86 percent of consumers being influenced by online channels. During this phase, travelers spend their maximum time on search, travel tour provider websites, price comparison websites, and travel articles. Online video too plays a significant role with 21 percent of travelers being influenced by this platform. In the booking and sharing phase, the report states that nearly 60 percent of customers book transport and lodging online, and over 50 percent share feedback online with social media being the dominant platform.

Talking about the market opportunities for online travel players, Vikas Agnihotri, Country Director – Sales, Google India said, “New users perceive that online channels are geared towards the more frequent flyers and experience-oriented travelers; and existing travelers research online but the lack of trust in payments and booking experience make them end up booking offline. If travel players tap these online users through personalized marketing, messaging and travel plans, they can further augment online travel bookings. This can be done by adopting digital technologies to influence customers early in the journey and moving from one-time engagement to ongoing relationships to have a positive impact.”

“There is a perception amongst consumers that online channels are geared towards premium customers, along with a marked distrust around payment and pricing terms. It is imperative for businesses to address these concerns in order to effectively tap into the growing base of users.” Arpan Sheth, partner Bain & Company said.

Decoding the Indian travelers

The report further identified the five cohorts of travelers in India, across business and leisure travel, and categorized each against their online research behavior:

  • Frequent flyers: Nearly 70 percent of them booked online, cumulatively spent $17 billion in 2018. They make their choices based on convenience, availability, brand preference and past experiences.
  • Budget business traveler: 86 percent of them researched online whereas only 60 percent book online, cumulatively spent $20 billion in 2018. This cohort makes their decisions based on cost of travel, availability and consultation amongst their personal business network.
  • Experience-oriented traveler: Around 70 percent of their bookings were done online. and cumulatively spent $22 billion in 2018. They extensively research both online and offline for ‘authentic’ experiences and convenience of options; display high loyalty towards preferred brand of airlines or hotels and actively share experiences.
  • Budget group traveler: 90 percent researched online and 55 percent booked online, cumulatively spent $29 billion in 2018. They make multiple decision-makers in the process and take the final decisions based on minimal cost.
  • Occasional travel visiting friends/relatives: 92 percent researched online but only 60 percent booked online, spent $6 billion in 2018. They maximize family convenience within a budget and believe online terms and conditions are restrictive.

However, challenges remain in meeting the expectations of these travelers. Customers perceive online channels geared towards premium cohorts (frequent flyer and experience-oriented traveler), while mass cohorts, with $55 billion in spending, remain underpenetrated. There are about 160 million non-transacting active Internet users in India with only 5 percent of online travelers from Tier-2 or Tier-3 cities. There is a significant (20 percent) difference between the booking rates of premium cohorts and mass cohorts, the latter being also dissatisfied with online channels (~33 percent satisfied) vs. premium cohorts (~42 percent). The second challenge is in penetrating existing users who exhibit a marked distrust in use of online channels to make bookings, especially around payment and pricing terms and booking experience compared with offline channels. Consequently, their online usage drops between the research (>86 percent online influence) and booking phases (~40 percent offline bookings).

How travel businesses need to adapt to the needs of online consumers

The report cites five major shifts that marketers need to make to market to the online travelers – First, alleviate consumer concerns by improving the booking and payment experience to build a trusted brand and increase adoption. Second, they need to address the negative customer perception issues by mass customization to drive higher share in the segment. They also need to utilize consumer technology to penetrate mass segments (standardize, enable sharing), reach non-transactors (build offline presence), and create new user access.  Moreover, they need to find innovative and frugal ways to package the experience to increase both adoption and retention.  Finally, they need to create a robust digital backend to adapt to customer needs across the purchase journey.

“The contribution of travel and tourism’s spend in India has reached developed market levels, from 6.7percent of GDP in 2013 to 9.4 percent in 2018. This growth, combined with a rapidly growing internet user base and adoption of online bookings will lead to $24 billion in incremental revenues through online channels by 2021. In order to benefit from this trend, businesses need to actively increase new user adoption and increase penetration in the existing user base across the purchase journey.” Joydeep Bhattacharya, partner Bain & Company said.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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Uganda travel and trafficking

March 23, 2019 by Forimmediaterelease

Sub-Saharan Africa has enormous tourism potential: leopards lounging in acacia trees, elephant herds drifting across vast savannah plains, gorillas and chimps rioting in deep forests, the earliest traces of human beings and their works. But according to the World Bank, the region receives a mere 3% of global tourism arrivals.

What scares tourists off may have something to do with an unfair, continent-wide reputation for lawlessness. There is a way around this. During the 1970s, entrepreneurs created the idea of eco-tourism as an alternative to the sun and sand package tours that wreaked havoc on the environment and local communities. Perhaps the eco-tourism concept could be expanded to encompass human rights more broadly, focusing not just on the ethical conduct of companies but on governments as well. Thus, travelers could be assured that their fees, taxes and entertainment dollars aren’t being used to support regimes engaged in grand corruption, human rights abuses, wildlife trafficking and the persecution of minorities.

Uganda’s new tourism push is a case in point. The government hopes to welcome four million visitors in 2020, more than double the current number. The Uganda Investment Authority is expediting bids from eco-tourism companies to develop ten sites in the nation’s national parks, including Queen Elizabeth, Masindi and Kidepo Valley. The World Bank has lent Uganda $25 million dollars to build a new hotel and tourism school, purchase equipment such as buses, game drive trucks, boats and binoculars and hire public relations firms to market Uganda in US, Europe, the Middle East and China. In October, Kanye West boosted the publicity effort by recording a music video in one of Uganda’s fine resorts and also visited Statehouse where he presented President Yoweri Museveni with a pair of his patented sneakers. Then in January, Tourism Minister Godfrey Kiwanda launched a beauty contest to identify Miss “Curvy” Uganda, whose zaftig figure will appear in tourism brochures.

The downside of Uganda’s tourism campaign is that every safari-goer it attracts will pay fees to government agencies such as the Uganda Wildlife Authority, which is currently engaged in a program of violent evictions that have left thousands of people in northern Uganda’s Acholi region destitute, and has also been implicated in trafficking in ivory, pangolin scales and other illegal wildlife products, both inside Uganda and in neighboring countries.

Since 2010, thousands of huts in Apaa, northern Uganda have been burned to the ground, and animals and belongings stolen by UWA officials and members of other security agencies. The government claims the area is gazetted for a game reserve, but residents say their families have lived in the area for generations and have nowhere else to go. Sixteen people have been killed and thousands, mainly women and children are now homeless. Some of the raids appear to have been carried out by members of the neighboring Madi ethnic group, and government officials have characterized them as ethnically motivated. However, the Madi and Acholi have lived in peace for generations and some suspect that senior government officials may be inciting the attackers.

Meanwhile, CITES, the international body that tracks endangered species has named Uganda as a global hub for the illegal wildlife trade. After damning reports about the scale of poaching in Kenya and Tanzania revealed that elephant populations were plummeting in both countries, stricter laws and better enforcement resulted in a nearly 80 percent decline in poaching in Kenya since 2013. Tougher enforcement has also resulted in steep declines in poaching in Tanzania. But between 2009 and 2016 an estimated 20 tons of ivory were trafficked via Uganda, along with over 3000 kilograms of pangolin scales.

The trade in wildlife products appears to be organized by senior officers of the army and UWA. Ivory traffickers working along the Uganda-Congo border told Belgian political scientist Kristof Titeca that much of their loot came from Congo and the Central African Republic, where the Ugandan Army, with US support, unsuccessfully tried to track down the notorious warlord Joseph Kony between 2012 and 2017. Thus, US taxpayers may have inadvertently facilitated Uganda’s wildlife crimes.

Uganda’s recently established Standards, Utilities and Wildlife Court, which is supposed to deal with trafficking crimes has begun prosecuting and convicting low level traffickers—the men who transport the goods to Kampala for export – but as yet there have been no prosecutions of those suspected of organizing the trade. When 1.35 metric tons of confiscated ivory disappeared from a Uganda Wildlife Authority storehouse in 2014, the director was suspended for two months and then reinstated. According to a 2017 Enough Project report, two senior Uganda Wildlife Authority officials quit the force in despair after apprehending traffickers and then being ordered by officials in President Yoweri Museveni’s office to drop the cases.

Uganda’s own elephants have largely been spared, and their numbers may even have increased in recent years. But other animals have not been so lucky. In 2014, the UWA granted a local company a license to collect thousands of pounds of scales from the shy, aardvark-like creatures known as pangolins. While officials claimed that the intention was to purchase the scales from people who’d collected them from animals who had died of natural causes, there’s little doubt that huge numbers of pangolins were killed as a result.

Unfortunately, the World Bank’s assistance to Uganda could be making things worse. It’s $25 million Tourism Sector Competitiveness and Labor Force Development loan, approved in 2013, is part of a larger $100 million Competitiveness and Enterprise Development Project which, according to project documents, allocates 21% – or $21 million, to government agencies, including the Uganda Wildlife Authority. World Bank spokespersons declined say how much of that will go to the UWA, and what the money will spent on, other than “systems strengthening and procuring tourism assets.”

Before the World Bank launches any project, it commissions an environmental impact assessment, as well as a review of safeguards to protect habitats and indigenous people who might be affected by it. In this case, the safeguards and Impact Assessment documents don’t consider the risk that Ugandan security agencies, including the army and UWA, might use funds raised from the project to engage in human rights abuses and trafficking.

This matters because countless development groups, including the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, the Red Cross and the World Bank itself– have seen millions of dollars in funding sink into Uganda’s swamp of corruption. Billions more have been siphoned out of the Treasury and the workers’ pension fund and or in inflated bids for infrastructure projects such as roads and dams.

In power for 33 years, Uganda’s leader Yoweri Museveni has hung on in part by spending funds looted from various development projects on voter bribery and harsh repression. In 2017, he sent Special Forces troops into Parliament to beat up MPs who were trying to block debate about a bill that would enable him to rule for life. One of the victims, MP Betty Nambooze, may never walk unaided again. Then in August, the same Special Forces arrested and tortured four other MPs and dozens of their supporters, including the famous pop star-politician Bobi Wine

Some of Museveni’s opposition-politician-victims, if allowed to govern, might – like the leaders of Tanzania and Kenya–do a better job of protecting Uganda’s people and its wildlife than he has. But as long as the World Bank and other donors keep allowing Museveni’s government to get away with corruption, human rights abuses and wildlife trafficking, these activities will only continue. While the World Bank continues to ignore this reality, Uganda’s prospective investors and tourists should steer their dollars towards less odious regimes.

Travel News | eTurboNews

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