Online Travel Trade in India: Challenges and Opportunities

Introduction

Planning and preparing for travel can be stressful and overwhelming due to the preparations needed in selecting and scheduling flights, arranging transfers, booking appropriate hotels, organizing other requirements at destination which requires consultation and assistance from an expert travel service provider/intermediary.But from the end of twentith century, internet has paved the way for rapid growth of digital/electronic business phenomenon across the world and made travel planning more convinient and less time consuming. Internet has created a dynamic competitive revolution in the way consumer shops or buys today. E-commerce became widespread and the most preferred mode of business transactions. E-commerce (electronic commerce) is often simply refer to buying and selling using the internet. People immediately think of consumer retail purchases from companies such as eBay, Amazon, MakeMyTrip, etc. But, e-commerce involves much more than just buying and selling online between organizations and customers and should be considered as all electronically facilitated transactions between an organization and any third party it deals with. Non-financial and other intangible transactions such as customer requirements for further information, violation of terms and conditions by other party etc., would also be considered as a part of e-commerce. A report published by Statista in 2017 cited that retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are anticipated to grow to 4.88 trillion US dollars in 2021.

It is a well known fact that tourism has influenced the world economy to a large extent and tourism development is always seen as a basic instrument in economic development, alleviating poverty and advancing food security (Čačić, 2013; Richardson, 2010). Tourism industry creates a vibrant fragment of the economy of any nation and generates remarkable financial, social and political impacts, thus acquiring a significant role in the general worldwide economic and social development (Ma & Hassink, 2013; Temirbulatova & Borza, 2015; Wang et al., 2012; Weaver & Lawton, 2010). Holloway et al., 2009 characterizes tourism as the absolutely most imperative economic activity on the planet. It brings numerous advantages, particularly in terms of job creation and employment of individuals who provide tourism services (Pender & Sharpley, 2005; Webster & Ivanov, 2014) hence contributes directly and indirectly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Unković & Zečević, 2014). As stated by Taušer et al. (2015), GDP has critical impact on the buying force of consumers and in this way influences the economic development and the local economies. Universally, tourism has endowed the GDP overflow from the most developed economic states to those with lower Gross Domestic Product (Sekulović, 2012; Blanke & Chiesa, 2013).

(Source: WTTC Annual report, 2018)