Indian Images

We traveled on our vacation to North India; Delhi, Agra, Fatehpur Sikri, Lucknow. The decision to take the holiday had been made several months back on a Sunday morning I had stumbled upon a “Re. 1” Air Deccan ticket while desultorily surfing online.

Low cost carriers are changing the travel market dynamics in India. The airport was crowded with first time air travelers. Was this all at the cost of the railway passenger traffic? Not really, I think. We traveled by AC First class from Delhi to Lucknow and I was quite amazed to see the compartment full up. The passengers on Air Deccan were first time air travelers: couples from small towns, old parents visiting their children. The passengers on the First AC compartment on Lucknow mail were successful businessmen, bureaucrats and families looking forward to a relaxing journey. Low cost airlines are expanding the overall travel market by making travel more affordable and convenient.

The return tickets were booked on Makemytrip.com (disclaimer: I have booked so many air tickets that I have received a year’s free Outlook Traveler subscription). I have always liked the clean interface (though Air Deccan ticketing is not integrated into the platform) and the prompt dispatch of paper tickets. This time, however, I had the unfortunate problem of trying to reschedule the dates, for which I had to make at least ten calls, each of which was greeted by a “ I shall get back to you” response. We used online portals once again to book our hotel in Agra. We decided on this part of the trip late and had no time to doi any bookings. On a cold morning, as my friend’s car sped past the wide roads of Lutyen’s Delhi, I fired my laptop using a wireless card and hit Makemytip and Travelguru.com. When a quick search yielded nothing, we called in the service center numbers from our cell phones (it was a STD call but what the heck – this was an adventure). We had just reached Faridabad by then and were sitting down to a predictable Sagar Ratna breakfast. My friend stated our requirements to the telephone service centers of both portals and we were promised a call back. Within 15 minutes, a lady from Travelguru offered us Oberois at Rs. 20,000 per night and said that that was the best they could do at such a short notice. The lady from Makemytrip took our requirements and budgets and called us back with an offer of Clarks Shiraz, assuring my skeptical friend, it is a “really good property and you are getting a deal ma’m”. Before we were at Palwal our bookings were done. She was nice enough to take our call in Agra and give us detailed driving directions.

Online travel portals can draw two lessons for building successful business models, from this experience. First, success in the online world will be dependent on building consistent customer service standards. Second, online portals will need to more successfully aggregate and discount hotel rooms and holidays.

So much for getting there. We had a great time in our holiday. We saw historical sites and we caught up with our friends. We had our fill of the range of North Indian cuisine: Punjabi Tandoori chicken in Delhi, Mughlai murg mussalam in Agra, Tunde and Galawat kababs of the famous Awadh tradition in Lucknow. We went to the dargah of Salim Chisti and to the ashrams of Mathura. We snapped pictures of the cooks in the old city of Lucknow who proudly told us that his pictures have gone all across the world. We felt sad that, in what we remembered as the serene shrine of Fatehpur Sikri, we were harassed for donations. We felt proud that the guides in Agra Fort spoke Japanese & Spanish. We shopped on the streets of Delhi and Lucknow and in the quintessential Indian shopping mall – Delhi Haat. We listened to Qaawali sung in a contemporary style by the Hussain brothers and I finished reading Paul Thoreau’s Hotel Honololu. We breakfasted in the heavenly AirForce golf course terrace overlooking the Jaipur Polo grounds and dined on Bengali cuisine at the chic Oh! Calcutta, a first generation entrepreneurial success.

All in all, we enjoyed once again the traditions of our great country: the land of colors and contrasts.

Tourism can make a big contribution in increasing the living standards of people in India , if infrastructural challenges can be met. Some of the areas to look out for are:

Consolidation of existing non 5-star hotels to a national chain that is consistent in quality and cleanliness.
Emergence of travel operators focused on domestic tourism and catering to the increasingly sophisticated middle class tastes.
Creation of infrastructural facilities like theme parks, fair grounds, stadiums, sports arenas.
Development of nation-wide food & beverages chains.
Creation of new travel options such as coast-to-coast sea cruises, river ferrying, luxury coaches.

They will not be as technologically innovative or financially scalable as online travel portals. But they will be fun to create and run.

And, I do hope that one day we have an organization like the National Trust of the UK. Seeing the condition of some of our national monuments I often despair of India’s future. Those who do not respect history are condemned to the lack of a future.