Why the SMB travel industry needs SAAS based technology

The travel industry is a tough market with ever increasing distribution costs and lower margins, no wonder the SMB segment - small/mid-size tour operators/agencies are having so much trouble. And to add to that antiquated technology makes it even tougher. This market in-order to survive the influx of OTA's/larger suppliers have to improvise in their product offerings by becoming more specialized and becoming more technology savvy. These players have to understand that putting together very specific packages and being destination focused would help them increase their sales volume, instead of becoming part of the me-too crowd, they need to focus on their products. Why I think Sofware As A Service is great for small/mid-size markets : because it bring them on par with their technology-savvy counterparts. Everyday when I speak to these companies I realize that they struggle with technology (or lack of), constantly focusing on infrastructure, booking engine, technical support staff rather than understanding their product growth path and scaling up sales volumes (or even provide more custom and better customer service).
Software As a Service (SAAS) makes it so much simpler, there is no need to budget for hosting, technical support staff and it's cheap. The pay as you go model makes it attractive as the spend can grow with volume. How does it work for the technology provider? what's in it for the technology company? its simple, with the advent of virtualization/cloud environment, low hosting costs, low hardware and deployment costs, Technology companies can implement much attractive multi-tenant solutions that provide great features. Where instead of dealing with every customer's specific needs and very specific workflows, SAAS solutions focus on making this more standardized and pre-canned workflows that enable these SMB players to focus on their core business. In addition the ease of integrating apps like google apps which it so much easier to manage your corporate core needs at such low hassle technology.
Over years my own company has shifted using a lot of core infrastructure support products to hosted solutions where we don't have to deal with maintaining it (everything from email/support ticketing process to finance/hr solutions) SAAS makes so much sense for a small operations. By judging the feedback I am getting on our own SAAS solution (Rezopia), I am quite sure that this is the way to go!

Does Air India really deserve the bailout money?

We all know the top 3 Airlines in India (Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher) all are running in red and now Air India wants Rs 10,000 crores ($2 Billion) of tax payers bailout money. My question is does Air India really deserve the bailout money? What has the airline done in the past 20 years to keep itself as the pioneer airline from India. There are series of mis-management from aircraft maintenance, unprofessional and lazy staff to old aircrafts and bad service. Should the government do what its best usage is - ie, govern instead of running airlines. Should'nt the airlines actually learn from Indian Railways in terms of competition and keeping it real.
I read an interesting blog by Rajesh Kalra in times of india - mentioning about freeloaders. I completely agree with this view point - with bunch of politicians getting freebees from the airlines how can it actually ever be competitive.
Here's my two cents on what the government should do
1) Privatize the Air India, Air India Express, India Airlines brands - bring in better management from airline industry to run the company, make accountability and profitability as number one priority.
2) Provide interim bailout money for the purpose of transitioning the airline from government run agency to making it a private company
3) revamp the service offerings, better services, more rounded routes, better codeshare partnerships, trim down the new excessive aircraft orders to only the ones required to replace the oldest fleet.
4) hire a world class firm to redo its logistics and ROI model for capacity planning and routing. Jointly operate maintenance with in-house and outsource firms (transition to better quality resources)
5) Re-define services - hopefully if the airline gets privatized the staff would have to retrain to earn their salary. (if they can only learn from peer airlines - Jet, Kingfisher, GoAir, Spice). Make staff more accountable and remove the government job status.
6) No Political Interference - dis-allow freeloaders like politicians, friends and family. Let them buy the tickets thru regular channels and make their spending and travel more transparent to the general public.
7) Finally actually compete with the other airlines on the basis of quality of service rather than sheer fleet size and shadow of government regulations.

How does the next generation traveler does his vacation planning.

Here's my two cents on the next generation traveler vacation planning process. {disclaimer: I consider myself as a savvy next gen traveler.}. So here's the detailed process of what I do before I plan a vacation.
Deciding Location/hotel
* check friends facebook photo albums - browse thru these, comment on the ones that look awesome - send friend an email on information
* check out tripadvisor for reviews - check out all the negative reviews - make my own conclusions.
* check out photos on tripadvisor - lookout for photos which show more information - specifically room photos - its an eye opener how different some of these look from marketing photos on hotel website.
* browse thru quickly on thorntree(lonely planet) for tips.

Next booking process
* kayak for air, hotel - bookmark the ones for prices that look good.
* google hotel check out what shows up.
* consolidate all information --> go to hotel/air direct site check out the difference - if not much then book directly.

Next plan the information - check out DMO sites bookmark information - post comment on facebook - review comments from friends
* checkout yelp for reviews on restaurants - bookmark good ones
* google for activity in local areas.
* post comment on thorntree - see what turns up on info for logistics.

Finally - download info on iphone, print info as pdfs docs - upload on google docs and think we are done.

On Vacation/Post Vacation
* post updates on twitter/facebook while vacationing
* post random pictures on facebook - have fun with good comments from friends.
* after trip - create album in facebook - upload pictures in flickr, upload videos in youtube. share all in facebook.
* try to remember everything and post a blog.

Now - if only I could do all of this on my iphone - well maybe we (XYKA) needs to write an app for this!

Political Promiscuity - coining the term for Indian Politics

the other day I was watching a news segment and heard the term "Political Promiscuity" - i immediately felt that such a term was quite appropriate for the current political scenarios in India. I also read an article by T.D. Jagadesan titled "Provoking political promiscuity" where he goes in length describing the fragmented regional parties. To me who has been living outside the country, its just amazing to see how the entire system miraculously somehow comes together and functions as a country and that too democratically. I wonder sometimes how is it that India as a country can achieve a 6+ percent growth rate and at the same time have such a dis-associated set of politicians. With the two leading parties Congress and BJP which on its own cannot come to power - we have a bunch of parties (and what a joke) - most of these parties have no serious leadership or agenda other than a race to foot themselves as Prime Ministerial candidates or play king makers. In previous races it was usually the question of who is going to go in bed with whom - but with this race it is more a question of who is not going to bed with whom. The journalists have started to define the sections as secular-communal divide - which I don't think any smart person can define. What is a secular party and what is a communal party. The easiest way to define is to say that BJP says there should be a temple built hence they are communal and everybody are secular. This topic can have its own blog! In all this ongoing mix of commotion when are the leaders going to debate about issues. Where are we on poverty (other than wining Oscars for movies projecting abject poverty), where are we on education, food and water. I would love to see a good debate amongst these people to articulate their plan on how they are going to solve them. I would love to see a change in Indian politics in the near future. I wish all the best to the young able politicians to get past this ridiculous show. I hope that the next generation of leaders can actually make a difference. (hope my dear friend Monica Matani can get into mainstream politics and get to be part of the team that can fix this).

Blogger Slack!! facebook twitter flicker youtube overwhelmed!!

Well I am blogger slack phase overwhelmed to keep up with all the social media tools that I now need to use. but now I am recovered and will pick it up from here. So in the past 9 months what have I been upto? lets see - Running- ran the San Jose Rock and Roll Marathon (will post some pictures soon) and under 3 hours I think. was great fun. Ran the US Half Marathon - the golden gate run is always spectacular. Ran the las vegas marathon - yuck was cold and a little fever running and was my personal worst in terms of time. ran the Kaiser Half marathon in San Francisco - great timing 2 and half hour.
Travel wise - did a quick trip to dubai and then to India (Mumbai and Bangalore).
Work wise - been busy with few new customers. Acquired a new company Pricesbolo.com - check it out - the click, compare, choose site for Indian market (will write more about it later). And yeah started RunMantra with Samir. Its a foundation to connect runners, find running groups and offer training programs. so lots going on, will keep the blog going.

Shivas Restaurant - Mountain View

Shivas Restaurant
800 California Street
Mountain View, CA, 94041
http://www.shivasrestaurant.com/

My Overall Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Category - North Indian
Price - $$
Ambiance - * * * *
Service - * * * */2

I have been to this restaurant (last visit - July 23rd 2008). This is a good restaurant, nice ambiance. We had a reservation but had to wait for 20 minutes after we reached and that too on a wednesday. So beware of reservations - I guess as Seinfeld says they can take your reservation but not hold it. Once we got our table, the service was average, the waiter seemed to be in a hurry and almost tried to make the decision for us. Between the four of us we ordered Paneer Tikka (quite good), Malai Kofta (average) and Bharoni Shimla Mirch (stuffed bell peppers - this was great). The Nans (breads) was quite good. The dessert Mango cheesecake was delicious. I liked the experience if you can ignore the noise and the wait. This is a great place for a larger group to hang out - they have a good menu of wines and some funny Indian cocktails - don't try the Lichi Martini (its tastes like a high fructose juice).

Overall I recommend this restaurant as an occasional place to go for some good North Indian food.

Jet Airways - Indian Airline in international scene

At last i can finally say that there is at least one Indian airline which has the international standards. I actually flew the inaugural flight of Jet Airways from San Francisco to Mumbai via Shangai. I really enjoyed the experience. Though the flight started 2 hours late (Since it was the first flight I assumed this kind of hiccup is normal) but other than that I was pretty impressed. The Flight itself was great - a new Boeing 777-300ER, a spacious plane with 3-3-3 combination for economy and 1-2-1 combination on business class. Each seat has a nice big tv - with great collection of movies especially hindi movies. I caught up with all the latest films. Food was good - finally Indian veggie food was treated with some respect. The staff were well trained and quite professional, it was a good feeling to hear all the announcements in Hindi and felt quite at home.
The overall flight timing is great with just under 20 hrs to reach Mumbai and connection experience at Mumbai for local flight was good too. This is going to be a great choice for Indians traveling over pacific (no more 8-10 hour layover at Singapore).
Jet Airways is an airline to watch out for in the international scene.

San Francisco Marathon Journey

It’s almost been two years since I ran my first marathon in Honolulu. When I started training the first time, I never could have imagined that I would be ever doing this again.
But here I am several marathons later, realizing that I am now addicted to long distance running.
Running has become a passion and running for a cause makes the grueling 26 miles easier. From March to August – I will be logging 500 Miles in this training program which is raising money for fighting AIDS

AIDS is an epidemic that though lot of progress has been made, is far from being over. Sadly, AIDS is now the leading cause of death for all people ages 15 to 59 worldwide.
According to UNAIDS, “Every day over 6,800 persons become infected with HIV, and over 5,700 persons die of AIDS, mostly because of inadequate access to HIV prevention and treatment services.”

That’s why I am committed to raise at least $1800 before June 2nd.
The money you all would help me raise would enable San Francisco AIDS Foundation to continue to provide the amazing services it provides to stop the spread of this dreadful disease.

Thank you for supporting me in this marathon task. When I cross the finish line on August 3rd to complete the San Francisco Marathon, I’ll know that you helped me and many others along the way.

Sincerely,
Rakesh

(Runner No 1493)

For your convenience of donating online – click on the link

Next generation travel - Journey of new traveler

Its been a long journey for the typical traveler - the traveler has moved from brochure information (well crafted - beautified marketing information) to real travel experience - blogs, candid photos, trip journals - trip advisor's. Though I feel this kind of information is in the right direction - My issue has always been with the information overflow. Being someone who has been well versed with the travel industry (since my own company XYKA deals with building these next generation travel tools) - I sometimes find myself lost in the overflow of information. Gone are the days where there was lack of information. but now there is so much of information that it gets fuzzy understanding the data. There are many different sources to get realistic information - referral system is still the most basic form of trusted information - but tripadvisor.com and sites like these also gets skewed between marketing and source of information. The much hyped travel 2.0 and web 2.0 sites are great but since most of the sites are still trying to woo the user generated content, it would be a while before these sites mature. The expectation of the common next generation traveler is to able to very quickly see consolidated most recent blogs, pictures, wants very real data - comparison of real prices - availability and the ease of booking. The next generation travel (the 3.0 or 4.0 ..) version of web reservations would be dictated by the traveler who wants to experience the travel before he travels making sure that he has absolutely made the right decision of choosing the travel itinerary.

Check out Varun making Pani Puri