Which Factors Have Fuelled Growth of Online Travel Bookings?
The use of ecommerce in civil aviation has been a boon for the industry as also for the people since it is all convenience of booking ticket on own. There have been a couple of important related technological developments which have made this growth even faster. While ecommerce technologies have ensured that the payments and deliveries are made in the utmost safe and secure manner and the consumer is protected against any untoward incident of hacking or theft, there have been certain other developments which have added the fuel to the fire of growth.
The first development has been the level of internet penetration among the population. This has increased many folds in the last two decades globally, which has made access to internet a reality for millions of people.
The access to internet is not sufficient for ecommerce to flourish. The people also need to have the devices which allow operation of the internet. So, it is not just the wired broadband connections linked to laptops or desktops, but the wireless connections right in our mobiles which has contributed a lot this effort. The ushering in of the 3 G, 4G and now the 5G in the mobiles has given a massive fillip to this industry.
The third important factor has been the ability of the companies running ecommerce businesses to develop those ways and means which makes it possible to showcase their products to the customers with good experience. These have been the web technologies, such as the responsive feature, and the mobile applications. These have been pretty good platforms to use for the ecommerce businesses.
One additional factor which has led to the surge in e-shopping in general and travel in particular, is the rising prosperity levels of the people. Due to this, vacations have been a product of need rather than of luxury. Therefore, people are taking to traveling more than ever before. The rising number of the aviation passengers every year indicates this fact.
While speaking of the travel business, travel industry has been one among the first to embrace the ecommerce and provide flight tickets online. The airlines and the agencies both made use of this opportunity to garner more customers. The factor of localization which agencies had in their favor till the advent of online commerce was gone to a good extent. And the people could book directly from the websites of the airlines, rather than approaching the agencies. This led to a realignment of the commission structure between the agencies and the airlines. The percentage of commission that was previously paid to agencies was decreased by the airlines.
However, there was one key factor in favor of the agencies. This was that of their hold over different product lines, such as the hotels, vacation packages, bus tickets, rail tickets, car rentals and cruises. Many airlines also began diversifying into these lines of businesses to give a competition to the airlines, but it is still the agencies which hold a major sway over these. Airlines tend to focus on their key business of flights and matters related to its operations and ticketing. Agencies do not have to worry about the non-ticketing aspects of the business.