It’s Complicated!

Holidays are complex. And that’s no understatement.

And so is anything to do with them. And we’re connected with Holidays in every conceivable way. So if you’re a statistician, the equation A=B & B=C hence A=C is true for us, i.e. we’re complicated as well. But we hate unnecessary complications. Hence we strive for simplicity all the time.

But consider this, Holiday as a travel product is actually a aggregation of every other travel product out there. Broadly speaking it includes –

• Transport
  • From your home to the destination
  • Within the destination(s) (intra city)
  • Between destinations (inter city)

and all of these could be by different modes – air, rail, bus, car, ferry etc.

• Accommodation at different destinations - Could be a hotel, villa, bed & breakfast, home stay, dormitory, camp, etc.
• Activities and Things to do - Anything you do at the destination is a Activity. It could be within the hotel / resort or outside of it. For example, playing pool within the hotel is a in resort activity while a local sightseeing tour of the destination city is a out of resort activity. After all no one visits a place to stay in the room 24×7.
• Ancillary Things – These include your meals, travel insurance, visa (if applicable), airport transfers, etc.
• Specialist Products – These include overnight Cruise, etc.

All holidays will include some or all of the above products and their variations. Whether a multi-destination New Zealand itinerary or a simple 1 Night getaway to Agra from Delhi, both are essentially a subset of 1 – 5 above.
So Holidays are complex as a travel product. But they are even more complex as a consumer product.

Consider this, people travel on holiday for leisure (I’m excluding Incentive Travel, Corporate Offsites and the entire bandwagon of MICE viz. Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Events). So when you’re traveling on leisure, some facts emerge:

You’re traveling by spending money from your own pocket (except the lucky folks for whom the Government pays LTA). And this money is no mean money, considering when a couple or a small family travels the bill rings in lacs and not thousands.

• People need to take time off from work. Except for a weekend getaway, for any other holiday it could be typically a week. People treasure their time and taking a week off is no mean feat.
• Majority of the people tend to travel with folks they know, be it family members, friends, colleagues, relatives, etc. Essentially people we know well and care about.

Because of 1 & 2 above, people don’t take holidays as frequently as they go to movies or eat out. Say a big one, twice or thrice a year (plus another 2 – 3 smaller weekend getaways or trips where work combines with leisure). So people go out of their way to plan their holiday. And emotions run high – leisure holiday is a time to enjoy and be happy, relax and unwind, rejuvenate and have fun. And when you’re spending through your nose, taking time out of your work and going with people you really care about, you want to ensure you get the best your money can buy. Essentially it’s a high involvement purchase with emotional over bearings. And such sales are complicated!

So Holidays are complex enough, but the puzzle is more jumbled. What complicates them further – the Suppliers & Intermediaries in the travel eco system. And how? Read my post Why We Love Group Travel.

And did I mention how complicated the technology could be to solve for some of this. Complicated because of lack of uniformity in standards travel companies follow to structure their travel content, varying levels of maturity of different individual travel products, non existence of any industry standard APIs beyond Airlines, huge quantum of offline content and pricing data, sheer fragmentation and long tail of suppliers / providers with little technology adoption, and lastly high walls to keep out start ups (or anyone not with deep pockets) from disrupting the peace!

So its no mean talk when I say it’s Complicated!