TravTalk India Online Magazine
The newly launched digital platform – Red Planner – is designed not only to educate the smaller agencies in secondary markets about destinations but also build an itinerary within minutes, thereby empowering them and offering them opportunities that weren’t easily available to them. Rajesh Kakade, Founder, Red Planner, shares more.
Hazel Jain
The potential of tier cities in India – in terms of disposal income and the hunger for travel – can no longer be ignored. The only thing posing a hurdle to agencies in these cities is lack of information and good network of suppliers. Rajesh Kakade, Founder, Red Planner, understood this issue. To tackle this, he has launched a digital platform designed for small-scale travel agencies. Being built for over two years, Red Planner is an itinerary builder that also offers real-time costing to agents. He launched this during a networking evening event in Mumbai that saw presence from key travel partners and NTOs, along with Riya Kakade, his daughter, who has joined the business.
Speaking about the new offering, Kakade says that the idea initially was just to build something that would help the trade design itineraries. This was more for tier II, III, and IV city agencies who struggled to understand the destination and design itineraries. “We started with that idea, and along the way realised that along with itineraries people are going to ask about the costing too. So we started building the costing into this platform. Today, Red Planner is an itinerary builder that also offers real-time costing to agents,” he explains.
This is actually not a selling platform, but more of a treasure trove of information. “Of course, selling will be there but this will also educate the travel agents on various destinations that are slightly difficult to understand but are doing well in the India market. These include the Scandinavian countries, Canada, US, Europe and Australia. To begin with, these are the five major destinations which we are promoting through this platform,” Kakade adds.
Once the booking is made, the mother company – Red Carpet Travel – will handle the entire logistics on the backend. Red Carpet Travel is a DMC and has offices in USA, Canada, Scandinavia, Europe, and Australia. So, while Red Planner will help agents design itineraries, Red Carpet Travel will take care of the after-sales.
Technology to the rescue
Kakade believes that travel, like everything else, must evolve. “Technology started to take over everything since covid and using it, the new digital platform will help agents sell on the spot without waiting for the DMCs to reply or waiting for rates or itineraries. We have also started working on an AI-based platform,” he says. His team has already started promoting it in tiered cities. “We have already started connecting with our valued tier II and III agents and started educating them about this new platform and how it can help them. The response has been amazing, they are really liking it. An agent in Satara in Maharashtra who is currently selling only Far East was thrilled to use the system and wanted to log in and start learning about new destinations. We are empowering the small-scale agents in tertiary cities with this platform, so they can quickly understand newer destination and sell tours,” Kakade adds. He has 12 developers in a team of 32 working on this. “This is dedicated to my travel agent partners. This can help them not only build itineraries in 2-3 minutes but also customise it for clients,” he adds.
