Tech critical to scale business

A new mix of travellers are showing a propensity to spend more specially on hyper-personalised travel, says Hari Ganapathy, Co-Founder, PickYourTrail, a Chennai-based travel technology start-up. The young entrepreneur also highlights trends that revolve around travelling for specific events, whether it is sports or music.

Hazel Jain

Chennai-based travel technology start-up PickYourTrail started with technology at the forefront. Hari Ganapathy, Co-Founder, PickYourTrail, says, “We knew that technology was critical to scale the business. So, right from creating the itinerary and pricing it, to the entire benefit of customisation, technology plays a strong role on our platform. Even in booking automation and post booking, we use technology across the entire spectrum of the vacation buying experience, even for simple things like on-ground support, flight delays, and weather.”

Technology has been a crucial part of PickYourTrail’s deliverables, and its repeat and referral rates speak for the kind of service they are able to provide. “This is largely because of technology as the backbone as it eases customisation. When we started 10 years ago, there were limited options available in the market for travellers, and that is how we started PickYourTrail – to plan one’s own trip and customising it. Today, we are seeing a trend where people are picking up itineraries that are efficiently curated,” Ganapathy adds. This, he says, could be gourmet, it could be road trips, it could be chasing the Northern Lights or going to Antarctica. “Wherever they see value in curation of a particular experience or a series of experiences. We are seeing good traction from all kinds of customer segments, be it young folks who love to party like the full moon party in Thailand to couples or families chasing short breaks. Sporting events are a great example for curation as well,” he explains.

Through technology, its users can also change cities and routings, they can either take a train or take a flight. There are algorithms and machine learning algorithms that play a huge role in ensuring that even the item that is built by the customer is seamless and is as close to a hassle-free holiday as possible.

Indians being a sport

Sports tourism has really picked up in the last couple of years, and Ganapathy confirms this. “While cricket is still a big, we are seeing a lot of traction for F1, tennis and football as well. People are travelling not just for the World Cups, but even for IPLs. Olympics, not so much, as it will still take some time to get popular in India as we win more medals,” he says.

F1 is round the corner in Azerbaijan, which Ganapathy adds, has gained steady popularity among Indian travellers. “There is also a bunch of F1s happening right now closer home. So, that is something that we are seeing good demand for. A new mix of travellers are having more propensity to spend. We see music concerts also pick up. For instance, the recent Taylor Swift shows were a huge attraction. People are planning their entire holiday around a key event, be it sport or music,” he adds.

So, who are these travellers? “These are the travellers who have kind of grown up on sporting events and have disposable income today. Internet is also creating the awareness around the Taylor Swift or the Coldplay concerts. Some bit of awareness and the disposable income rise is what is contributing to this trend, in my opinion. Obviously, supply is at its core and choosing the right vendor partner is critical. Travel has so many moving parts and getting the right partner and answering any kind of breaks that happened in a journey is crucial,” he says.