Gone are the days when people planned their trips according to their budget, sight-seeing options, and cultural activities, this new Indian generation is fuelled by the hashtag wanderlust. Social media has normalized it to a point that, according to a recent survey by Ixigo, 36% Indian millennial chose their destinations based on its “Instagrammability.” While major players in the digital travel space focus on the second stage of a trip; booking tickets and creating itinerary, but there’s a cluttered space left in the first stage, that is, motivating people to travel and planning. With Ghoomo.com, we plan to de clutter that digital space.
According to a survey by Rocket Media, a whooping 63% of Indian millennial are influenced by travel bloggers on Instagram and Facebook. However, there’s no unified space to follow them all at once. We will create a community of travelers where they can share their stories and photos with everyone.
Why would they join our platform?
1) Visibility. It’s a common space for travelers where they can get a following.
2) Gamification. We’ll partner up with brands to offer them discounts, gifts, etc.
Why would people visit our platform?
1) Honest first hand reviews.
2) Information and suggestions.
We will also create and curate personalized travel content and news for our target audience so it adds even more value to our platform, and make it the one place stop for Indian travel community.
Market Space and Competing Platforms
Tourism in Indian economy is growing rapidly. The World Travel and Tourism Council calculated that tourism generated ₹16.91 lakh crore (US$240 billion) or 9.2% of India’s GDP in 2018 and supported 42.673 million jobs, 8.1% of its total employment. The sector is predicted to grow at an annual rate of 6.9% to ₹32.05 lakh crore (US$450 billion) by 2028 (9.9% of GDP).
Acknowledging the above statistics, it is evident tourism will be an important industry among the Indian population and with the revolution in Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), it is expected an important role to be played by travel centric digital platforms.
There are only few platforms catering the needs of customer in very first phase of planning their trips i.e. recommending the geographic locations and providing a common platforms to all the travel bloggers to share their experience among their audience.
Some major platforms in this are Tripoto, Tripline, Maptia, Trip Advisor, etc but they all have a lack in placing a space for bloggers and ultimately reply on user reviews, and end up focusing on second phase of travel planning i.e. recommending hotel bookings, nearby restaurants, etc.
Competitive Advantage
As evident from the existing competitors the is a market gap in the first phase of travel planning, where customers make up their mind to travel but the most difficult decision is to choose their travel destination.
With Ghoomo.com, we want to make their decision making easier by recommending the trips as per various external factors effecting their travel plan. This factors include the budget, seasons (festive or shopping), place specific cultural event, environmental considerations, etc.
For instance if travelers are also interested in cultural activities of the state apart from visiting famous places, they can be informed about the folk dance of that place nearby their location.
Apart from this there is a lack of unified platform for different travel bloggers share their experience at single platform, with our platform we provide an opportunity to audience to find their favorite blogger and also empower a travel enthusiast to be one of them and develop her followings.
Revenue Model
This aspect of any business is evolving in nature but major verticals that we will consider are as follows:
1) Advertising networks on our website. (Google Adsense, Taboola, etc)
2) Partnerships with companies operating in second phase of a trip. (makemytrip, etc)
3) Sponsored content on social media and our platform. (Native advertising, advertorials)
4) Brand campaigns among travel influencers on our platform.
Target Audience
The culture of wanderlust (the reconciliation between travelling and social media) is popular mostly in the 18-30 age group from tier 1 and tier 2 cities, so that’s our core target audience. However, in the future phase, we also plan to roll out a sub section on our platform for just women audience
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