Desicow.com blog

couple of websites which have contact details of India Travel Agents [Desi Travel agents] in USA.

http://www.thingsindian.com/travela.htm

http://www.nyindia.us/travel-agents.html

http://www.thedesicentral.com/travelagents.htm

http://www.udeps.com/travel_agents.html

If you guys know of any more websites please let me know, I will be glad to add it to list.

Also do not forget to try DesiCow.com . DesiCow.com is a new website that connects you with Travel Agents. You submit your trip details and Travel Agents submit quote.

There are lot of people who search internet to find Travel Agents for India. I found couple of such websites through search engine and then randomly called to some of the agents. Unfortunately I came across lot of numbers invalid.

I asked my friends “If you were to search Indian Travel agents on internet, how would you you do?”

Most of them gave common answer which was like
:- search for “Indian Travel agent” or “Desi Travel Agent” using search engine.
:- give call to couple of agents local to your area.

There are two not so cool things about such an approach.
1) all the contacts found on internet have no guaranty of their service level [these includes trust factor, customer support].
2) We have got in to habit of talking to Desi agents who are local. Its quite possible that an India Travel Agent from NJ might give good price for SFO - Mumbai ticket and similarly some California based Travel agent for India might give best price for JFK - Mumbai Air ticket.

In olden days we had Papaer tickets, so it was convenient to deal with local agents. May be visit him personally and pick up your ticket. However ever since E-Tickets have come in to practice it doesn’t really matter if you buy Air tickets to India from some non-local travel agent ( if he is giving good price).

Actually we don’t charge fortune, we charge Travel company small fee of 10 cent every time a travel agent submits a quote.

What are benefits of this?

Quality of data.
we are looking for quality data. Although at this point of time I just have two travel agents on board [I am intentionally delaying more agents to come on board, I will talk about this in some other post],  but eventually we will have couple of agents from several regions in USA. These agents would be reliable people to deal with, one who gives good price for your tickets.

Works for everyone
People who are submiting Trip requests to gather quotes their contact details are only shared with Travel agents who are interested in selling that ticket.

Branding of Travel Agency
Staying active on website by submitting quotes for trip requests helps you get in touch with person who is looking to buy tickets, at the same time brings you in front of people [ and search engine, these
features are yet to come on website (Heard of SEO services charging 100s of dollars for optimizing your company website to perform better on internet? Desicow is soon going to make your life is easy in that
aspect)]

Advertisement sucks!
I am an engineer. Ask me to write a complex program, I will be more then happy to take a cup of coffee and get to work on my laptop. I love my job. Who the hell wants to call travel agents and ask them to get on board on some new website? Wait a minute I have got one easier option, let me register on google adsense and start flashing those advertisements on my website. I have done this in past and it has paid very well. However I don’t want to show advertisements this time for one important reason. The usual principle is get lot of users by attracting to your website, show them add, make users click on some of the ads, make money. So you put efforts in bringing users and then try to change their focus from your product (website) to all 1000s of ads [including ads of how to improve your sex life, loose 10 pounds and win ipod since you were luckiest 100000th visitor].  No advertisements.

Desicow.com is not spending money in promoting website. We are trying to reach out people on social networks like orkut.com and relying heavily on word of mouth publicity. We are positive that desicow.com solves some small real world problem and it is worth trying and it is something I will use it personally when I am planning to buy Air Tickets to India. (This was one of the important criteria suggested by my mentor “Do some project only if you would use it personally”)

Is it difficult to reach wider audience ?
Yes! Its extremely difficult to reach out people. In today’s world we are bombarded with 1000s new products and services every day.  There is no way you can catch up with everything.

One thing we surely don’t want to do is “bump in to people”, what I mean by it is, we dont want to jump on people’s head and talk big about desicow. We want help from people like you to spread word. I want some of you to help me shape this project, send me any negative feedbacks you have or ideas you have to make this website popular.

Will we ever get huge traffic like some of the top 5 popular Desi websites ?
Not sure about that. May be not because we are not looking for 10,000 people to visit us everyday and most of them bounce back. We want those 1000s people who are planning to buy Air tickets to India in near future. We want those 1000s of people who like small community websites like Desicow.com, which are started by some ordinary guy as side project. We want those 1000s of people who like to refer their friends and family about some useful & purposeful services.

DesiCow.com is a simple website which solves one real life problem.

I am from Mumbai living in USA and every year I make a visit to home. Every year while its time to buy Air ticket, I will start talking to my friends and find out about some travel agents they know of. I will make a list of 4 to 5 travel agents[from friend's referral, Indian magazines and online yellow pages].

Once I get quote from these agents, I go ahead and buy ticket from Agent who gives best price and sounds good in dealing.

DesiCow.com eventually make this process more streamlined.

* Users submit their trip details
* Travel agents submit quote they can offer
* User buys ticket from agents directly.

The advantage here is Travel agents all over nation[USA] will get access to you trip request. There are very good chances that you will find best price quote on desicow.com

I am starting a website where Travel Agents will be able to get in touch with potential customers who are shopping for air tickets to India. Of course tickets need to cheapest and should beat all other prices.

Mr. X runs a travel agency, selling tickets to India. Business is doing all good.

One fine day he comes across a website which claims to solve an important issue in same business and also claims that website will give boost to Mr X’s business.

For some reason Mr. X decides to give this website a shot, so that he is not left behind in competition. Within minutes Mr. X realizes that website does solve problem if it is able to attract users who are shopping out for Air tickets to India. He also finds that website is not free. There is a small fees involved in using website to get business out of it.

Is it wrong to ask your first few customers(Travel Agencies in my case) to pay for using website?

Almost all of my friend said ‘YES’. Everyone said - “make it FREE for first few Agencies”

I can guess some of the reason they are thinking:
1) Travel agencies will avoid using website because of fees involved.
2) no one wants to pay money to a new website.
3) You will get more travel agents on board if you make it free
4) Its always easy to start asking for fees once website gets bit old and popular.

However I have some different thoughts in my mind.

1) A business owner doesn’t care about some small amount of money, if in return, website is really helping his business. In fact he will surely avoid wasting time on some website which doesn’t help him(even if it FREE).

2) As business owner instead of spending small amount he is more concern about how he can get more out of this website, promote his business and sell more tickets.

3) Desicow.com is actually bringing a travel agent closer to potential ticket buyer; its way better then wasting money on other websites for advertisement.

Desicow.com is going to give Travel agents 100s of ticket leads over a period of time. Travel Agents will get access to these leads from all across USA.

I want these travel agencies to push me to add more tools and features to website. I want them to make me go crazy fixing any issues and get more potential ticket buyers. This kind of coomunication will only come in to picture if these travel agencies have paid for using website. They are serious about business and now they have paid to use desicow.com , so desicow.com better be a sincere website.