TravTalk India Online Magazine
B2B booking platform GRNconnect has now launched a DMC business in the US to meet the growing requirement for tailor-made itineraries and personalised travel that it has been witnessing. Deepak Narula, Managing Director, GRNconnect, talks about the company’s growing global portfolio.
Nisha Verma
Speaking about opening their DMC business in the US, Deepak Narula says, “It’s been some time since we have been thinking about launching DMCs, as there was a lot of requirement for tailor-made itineraries and personalised travel.We were planning to launch it in January 2020, and we only delayed it because of COVID. The rationale behind it was that there was a need for quality operators from the US, not that there aren’t any. However, we understand the Indian market, especially their requirements, making it easier for us to cater to it. Keeping all this in mind, we were sure that this will be a success for us, and we are getting good response so far from India as well as other markets. There are future queries also,” he adds.
With more domestic markets opening, Narula says, “Every country had their domestic business growing, and this is where we embarked on the idea of distributing more in different countries. Hence, for our DMC, we have a two-pronged strategy — firstly, selling US as a destination to the world and to explore distributing GRNconnect more in the US market, which is one of the high potential markets for us. With better technology, we are distributing to many agents in the US market now. We also have some other products within GRNconnect besides hotels, apartments, transfers sightseeing, etc. We also started ‘pay at the hotel’, which is becoming very popular for us.
In addition, our white label product is very popular right now and API continues to be on an all-time high demand. Overall, it’s a nice basket of products that we are offering to agents on a cross-selling, or buying/ selling basis.”
Expansion plans
Sharing that they have a few destinations in mind for DMCs apart from the US, Narula reveals, “We are looking at Egypt and some other destinations as well, but it will take time. Besides that we have some ambitious plans for GRNconnect also. Currently, we are distributing GRNconnect in America and over 50 countries. This is what we did during the pandemic — we increased our database and our market base; we reached out to more agents. The response might not have been immediate, but we were able to get some response the moment the market started opening up.”
The addition of white label and ‘pay at the hotel’ was done to further improve upon current products. “Hence, we did a lot of contracting, added many suppliers, especially local DMCs, to our platform. Our rates have also improved, our inventory has increased and our bookings are flawless now. It’s much easier to book with fewer clicks on GRNconnect right now than it was pre-pandemic. User interface and user experience is better now. Thus, overall, it’s a much better version of what it was pre-pandemic,” he explains.
As of now, GRNconnect has a registered database of around 30,000 agents in India and abroad. “We are reaching out to them. Our whole idea is to go for domestic tourism in all the countries in different markets,” he adds.
Commenting on the status of industry today, Narula concludes saying, “I hope we all get over this soon and without much help from anyone. I have seen travel agents surviving on their own. They have been very bold in facing this crisis. Everybody’s starting to survive. They have shrunk to their best possible capacity, but I think we all will sail through.”
