How to Start a Travel and Tourism Business in India
In today’s life, many people suffer from stress, sometimes so much that the only thing we desire is isolation, and stay away from literally everything and everyone. Or we want to just pack our bags and elope for a few weeks to somewhere that doesn’t have the static daily routine of our boring life, and a few of us do not even want to return from that place.
Vacations are something that brings us the much-needed freshness in our rather banal life and are often tempting just because they offer us something that is absent from our daily life i.e., excitement. We all live lives that are far away from any form of the natural beauty of pleasure, and whether we like it or not, we have to do it, as we earn our bread here only.
What if I tell you that you can live this fun life, and also have an opportunity to make money from it too? Stop widening your eyes, I am going to tell you how you can do that!
The only answer to this is a Tour and Travel Business, a business that allows you to explore the beauty of nature, see new and fun places, socialise and meet with amazing new people and also make money from all this! The business earlier had a much different but in the present time, all it means is creating packages of trips for families, college students, couples etc. along with transportations, accommodations, food and beverages and of course activities and entertainment!
Now the question arises, how can one start a Travel and Tourism Business? And below we have the answer for it-
Identifying your customer and target audience
The very first step of starting not just a travel and tourism business but any business is identifying the target customers and realising what their desires and tastes are regarding the services you are going to offer. It is like constructing or making small amends to your trips or activities just to satisfy their needs and also land upon a market plan with special attention to the customer’s budget.
Additionally, you can personally visit places and venues in order to create your own personal database for locations, accommodations, activities and transportations services that you are going to offer to your consumers, and you can also make connections with locals who may assist or help your customers upon their arrival.
- Identify your target customers
- Creating packages that suit your consumers.
- Create a personal database of locations, accommodations, activities and transportations
Dealing with the Legal Aspects of the Business
As per the Indian Legal System, there is not a great quantity of red tape surrounding you, when it comes to commencing your own Tourism and Travel Business. There are no License requirements when it comes to starting or registering a Tour and Travel Business.
- Register your Company
- Choose whether you want it to be a Private Company, an LLP, an OPC or a partnership.
- Create a plan of actions or strategy for your business
Now that you have decided to start a business, you must also decide what kind of company you want to get your business registered as. Whether to want it to be a private company, an LLP, an OPC, or a partnership at the initial stage?
The choice of your business structure depends largely on the business plan and strategy or the investment amount.
Branding your Business
Once you land upon a brief idea about how your business structure looks like and what your target customer set is, the most important thing to do is creating a strong brand for the business.
It is no secret that in today’s capitalist world, it is a little difficult to survive along with all this competition, and the only way you can overcome this obstacle is by creating and implementing a unique and well-built plan or strategy. The only thing to keep in mind while drawing out a plan is the customer. Think about how you want them to feel when they visit your webpage or see your advertisement. The key is satisfying the customer, the more you do it the more value is added to your brand and the bigger your brand or business becomes.
- Create a brand around your company
- Working towards customer satisfaction adds to your brand value
Acquiring Funds for the Business
How do you plan to fund this whole business that you are creating?
At the initial stages of a business, the costs are generally very low as you don’t have that many expenses of buying costly pieces of equipment or you do not need a spacious office to run the firm.
But at the later stages of your business journey, you will need all that and make sure that you have all that you need to have a proper plan for funding right from the beginning. The initial funds will mostly be spent on branding, marketing and advertising and you probably will also need to rent an office space and hire a few employees which to be honest is expensive and will require funding.
Unlike many other businesses, there are no tried and tested fi paths for funding a tourism business, you can go for literally anything including personal funding, loan or even venture capital funding, all possibilities are good to go.
- Work out the funding for your business
- You can go for loans, personal funding or venture capital funding
Marketing and Launching
Marketing is where the majority of your funds are spent, and it surely is one of the most important areas you should focus on. After a detailed study and marketing and registering you are ready to launch your business and also earn from it!
- Study and draw out a marketing strategy
- Marketing your company and launching it
Some successful Travel and Tourism Companies in India
There are a few Tourism and Travel Companies who have managed to do exceptionally well in their field, even though there is huge competition among them. Below are a few of these companies that are successful and will teach you a thing or few about the business-
- MakeMyTrip – MakeMyTrip.com is India’s leading online travel company founded in the year of 2000 by Deep Kalra. Created with an idea of empowering Indian travelers with instant booking and comprehensive choices, the company started its journey in the US-India travel market.
- BanBanjara- BanBanjara is an Indian online travel company, based in Rajasthan that specialises in Indian Tourist destinations and also covers various tourist spots all around the world
- Club Mahindra Holidays- Club Mahindra Holidays is a famous and successful Indian Hospitality company founded in the year of 1996. It is a part of the Mahindra Group and provides holidays on a timeshare basis.
- Yatra- Yatra.com is an Indian online travel agency and also a travel search engine. The company is based in the city of Gurugram, Haryana. It was founded by Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin and Sabina Chopra in August of 2006.
- GoIbibo- Goibibo is India’s leading online travel booking brand providing a range of choice for hotels, flights, trains, bus and cars for travelers.