India will be among our top 3 markets in 3 years: Agoda's global CEO

As the Indian market continues to boom on the back of its growing economy and domestic travel, Agoda’s global chief executive officer Omri Morgenshtern, in an interview with Akshara Srivastava and Gulveen Aulakh in New Delhi, says the market has the potential to become its third largest. He also says that inbound travel and market size will expand if India eases the visa process and makes travel access for foreign tourists seamless. Morgenshtern noted that India is not only the company's top market for growing its tech workforce but also one of the only three countries where it advertises. Edited excerpts:

 

Where do you see India in your list of priority markets and how do you see it growing in the next three years?

 

India is definitely among our top five important markets and it will grow further over the years because of the growing economy and GDP of the country, which is increasing people’s discretionary spends.

 

The government’s investments into schemes like UDAN and the investments being made by airlines are adding to that, which are all creating a huge, booming market that is growing at a rate of over 10 per cent. While inbound continues to lag the domestic market, India outbound is growing at a steady rate. The top five destinations for Indians are Thailand, the UAE, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. 

 

I will be amazed if India is not in our top three markets in the coming three years.

 

Inbound travel to India has been slow to pick up. What do you think needs to change to change that?

 

While flights to India have increased, the government needs to work on reducing friction on entering –easing Visa norms and procedure to fill forms.

 

I think there's still a way to go for India but we're seeing the beginning of that with the government removing the visa fees for Thailand and Malaysia last year. Everywhere we go, we have seen that whenever the governments took steps to remove the visa restrictions, to make inbound travel more frictionless, it made a huge difference in the number of arrivals into the country.

 

Another thing for India is to make the attractions and infrastructure more accessible for foreigners, while also ramping up promotion. Religious and spiritual travel is a unique selling point for the country, which it has recognised, and now needs to promote more efficiently. 

 

What are the kinds of investments you’re making for the country where the online travel aggregator (OTA) space is also becoming more competitive?

 

While the OTA market is competitive, there is a lot of collaboration among the players here.

 

At Agoda, we are working on making the experiences as convenient as possible. A part of this also means localising the product as best as possible – things like online payment options and discounts, which are a big part of the user experience in India.

 

Our job is to build a product for local people and hyper personalise them because that’s what helps generate trust and hence, generate repeat behaviour.

 

There is also a lot of investment in just covering the market, in terms of the amount of properties, so we’re not just tying up with large hotel chains like IHCL recently but also talking with hostel players. We have five million properties on our platform globally and India has been the market with the highest number of on-boarded properties in the past couple of years.

 

India is also among the only three countries where we run active TV campaigns, which is a long-term bet.

 

Apart from that, we are also investing in the tech talent here, and so Indians are the second highest nationality among Agoda employees. We have 300 people here, and it's growing nicely.

 

  How are you leveraging the use of AI to stand out in the market?

 

AI helps us drive efficiencies, which might not necessarily translate into savings that you drop to the bottom line, but multiples our ability to generate. So, being an early mover and getting those efficiencies faster than anybody else means top line growth.

 

I can tell you that we are doing very well in those areas. The second one is that AI will also help us create differentiation, which will eventually enhance customer experience.