Leadership Series Fireside Chat Edition 2 with Mr. Ritwik Khare, COO, GCC Business, Key Accounts and International Supply, MakeMyTrip

1.     Inbound vs Out-bound travel for Airlines and Hotels: Out-bound travel is not going to be the biggest pillar for MMT. In the past 3 years we had seen MMT focusing on developing international business and growing outbound travel for both Airlines and Hotels at triple digit numbers but due to the current situation MMT’s current focus will be more towards inbound travel for the next 3-4 months at least. Adding to this Ritwik also said that the outbound travel will resume when things will start getting better and the closest destinations that could result in outbound travel initially are Maldives, Dubai, Bangkok, Sri Lanka.

2.     Customer Hotel Preference post COVID-19: MMT is in discussions with their hotel partners to ensure safety of their guests. Hotel Chains are exploring possibilities of keeping the room vacant for 24 hours after the check-out. This can be something that can be picked up by hotels rich on room quantity. MMT is seeing a pick-up in demand for good quality home stays, beach and independent properties. They see a very clear move towards branded properties and independent properties going through a tough phase. In a nutshell MMT predicts that consumers will prefer: good quality home stays, properties offering alternate lodging or following 24 hour gap between check-ins and branded properties over other stay providers.

3.     MMT’s strategy around Cx improvement promoting Hotels with higher health and safety features: MMT is proactively working on this front. Hygiene and safety is definitely the number one choice criteria for any traveler and this is exactly what came out as a result of MMT’s research. MMT is seeing that their partner hotels and airlines are now coming up with details around the hygiene assurance that they are offering which will instill the confidence in the traveler for using their services. MMT has a 3 prompt approach around hygiene and they are developing it with complete attention to details. They will soon be announcing a partnership with a reputed audit organization. In the 3 prompt approach, MMT will be:

a.     Self-Certification (rolled out in India on 19th May 2020): This includes 3 tiers:

          i.     SOP roll out to Hotel and Airline Partners with a request to do self-submission.

          ii.     Validation of these SOP submissions by the market manager which is a pre-defined check list of 18 critical items (those partners which fulfills at least 16 criteria will be impaneled as Hygiene+ partners)

         iii.     Hygiene+ Branding for qualifying partners on the app which is already live from 20th May 2020 (4000 partners in India are already signed up on this and are live on MMT’s page. Bangkok, Dubai, etc. will be covered in the next coming weeks)

b.     Third-party certification: Partnering with someone who can offer standardized offering which will be a next step to self-certification which will give the consumer a re-validation to security and hygiene. This will be a quarterly certificate offered to partners ensuring consumer safety and hygiene. This will be made live soon

c.      Highlighting steps taken in content by partner brands ensuring consumer safety and hygiene

4.     Is "Know Your Guest" (KYG) the next admission criteria that will should be implemented before allowing booking for guests? : Guests will themselves be very cautious about the safety and hygiene factors thus implementing KYG might now be the best idea as this can burden them. However, MMT will surely publish details around safe and unsafe zones, and will strongly promote “Aarogya Setu” app. Screening at Hotels will definitely take place for the good of everyone.

5.     Expected changes in the Airline segment: This will be a very challenging phase for the airlines sector given the fact that the traffic will be at its all-time low. Procedures on the airline front will including boarding passes, precautions to be taken, arrival time and all other preparations will all increase strictly. Eventually these changes will become part of the normal lifestyle. Since the capex on airline business is very high, the industry and government will try to make sure that not many airlines goes out of business. Airlines have started posting a lot of content around how they are ensuring the safety and hygiene of the consumer. MMT has already started receiving such content updates from them and they are also ensuring that all the details are made available on their website on behalf of the airlines. During this week MMT will be coming out with a very interesting video giving confidence to the consumers that the whole travel and hospitality ecosystem is working towards ensuring guest safety and precaution.

6.     How will MMT help soft launch of hotels? : MMT being one of the largest players in the market feels responsible and concerned towards their hotel partners. As a result of this concern, their engagement/conversations with the Hotels partners has doubled from before in the last two to two and a half months. This because this is the first time the industry has come up so close and is standing together and also because of the fact that today people have more time to connect as compared to a couple of months back. MMT is ensuring the Soft Launch of Hotels post COVID-19 by ensuring on the following things:

a.     Offering lots and lots of data to the Hotels so that they can take better decisions

b.     Providing cache as the biggest metric to follow

c.      Showcase hotels offerings to the larger customer base that they have

7.     Will corporate travel overtake impulse driven traveling in the coming time? : First of the block will be “necessary” travel in both corporate and personal travel. Followed by leisure and discretionary target. MMT’s studies shows that people between the age group of 20-40 are showing signs of travel. MMT is bullish on the fact that staycation and driving holiday is going to come back. Impulse travel within country boundaries will keep happening. “Dekho Bharat” and “Vocal for Local” will surely happen. Every country has got a lot of places to offer as travel destinations, these will be the new vacation hot-spots for travelers in the coming time. Apart from the necessary corporate travel, normal corporate travel will not pick up any time soon.

8.     Is there a consumer benefit associated to vouchers/coupons for forward looking travel?: These vouchers/coupons are a win-win amongst all the three stakeholders involved, which are the OTAs, the Hotel and the guest.

·      The OTA facilitates it

·      The hotels gets up-front cash out of it and gets some guaranteed business out of it

·      The guest gets to consume the offered services at a cheaper price

The value for the guest can come in either of the two forms:

·      Add immense value and then offer rate advantage, or

·      Provide double the rate value on what the consumer is buying

This could be one major step towards igniting the market and bringing business back.

9.     What will change in the OTA model moving forward? : OTA being an intermediary will continue to offer great insights and value to consumers and suppliers. Not much fundamental changes will be happening, but definitely tweaking of product offerings will come into play. There could be a possible launch of certain business models like providing F&B services, self-driven cab services etc. Some OTA’s might opt for monetizing the huge customer bases that they have, come up with ancillary possibilities of helping customers and partners buy hygiene related right products (only if there is demand). These are some kind of pivotal changes that one can expect from an OTA, but a massive fundamental changes is something which is not on the cards.

10. Can OTA’s offer reduced commission t Hotel partners? : Over the last 12-18 months, MMT has standardized and optimized their distribution cost for their partners in a very aggressive manner. They firmly believe today that the need of the hour is more revenue generation and customer acquisition. MMT has done deep analysis in the last two to three months on all sorts of cost of distribution and they are amongst the most optimum partners for distribution channels. MMT’s area of focus if customer acquisition and they are ready to spend that extra dollar, like everyone else, to ensure that they on-board maximum number of customers. Moving ahead, like done in the past MMT will ensure to help out their partners in every possible way.