It was also starting to get to the point where the number of aggregators/search engines surpassed the number of airlines, and given that every aggregator left out one or two, one ended up with more or less the same effort as one would need to check out various airline sites

Differentiator ? Service provided ? Value ? I’d say its ripe for the picking!

- Sameer

I have personally switched to transparent meta-search sites such as ixigo.com and have chucked OTA sites.

sameer

Thanks for your comments.

For my specific case, I’d brought a special need that was a large enough opportunity – both as a transactional as well as a marketing opportunity – to devote extra time and energy towards.

But for the larger case, some questions.

a. Is technology the end goal for a startup ?
b. What exactly is the value created by OTAs currently ? Why does the one currently offering a 15% flat discount seem to get a bump in traffic ? Is that a healthy business strategy ?
c. I’m not a ‘customer’. For this use case I’m a traveller.That is the point. Is that not something waiting to be serviced?

The example of the Madurai-Delhi trip, incidentally, has a tech solution. Technology cannot be developed independently of user behaviour, and certainly not independently of user needs.

Technology is a tool. Finally, its some combination of information that I’m looking for – and technology can help leverage that. OTAs, incidentally, even currently depend more on relationships with the producers of the services they’re peddling rather than major technology. On the consumer end, my contention is not much has been thought of yet – it boils down to a sort over the data they have, and the draw is usually a deal or offer.

I’ve had experiences with a couple of Bangalore TAs who have used technology as tools, yet provided me pretty good service (route conditions, prepared itnineraries, etc). The right way is to first think of what the consumer needs, and then see what combination of service + technology solves that.

- Sameer

Ideally, to develop long term relationship, one would like that a travel operator completely customises offering according to the customer need. However, they would need to be adequately paid for that. Otherwise, they would prefer that the customer take additional effort and uses their technology platform to achieve the best possible results themselves.

Guess is you are not the customer for an OTA today.