Metasearch sites have been disrupting the hotel distribution landscape for a long time now. By creating an attractive third avenue for hotels to market themselves, it has presented a hopeful medium between direct bookings and the OTAs. And as travellers demand quick and easy access to accurate comparison data, the use of metasearch is also rising.
However, metasearch now have the capacity to not just add value to consumers, but also to suppliers, when they are tasked with comparing more than just prices of hotels and airfares. This is where startups like TripShelf step in.
TripShelf is an online holidays packages marketplace that helps tour operators grow and manage their business. Founded by Dhruv Raj Gupta, Sukhmani Singh and Jai Raj Gupta in the year 2016, the New Delhi-based company helps builds brands, market packages, and drive high quality leads. While Dhruv Raj Gupta’s past work experience includes a stint at Google, Sukhmani Singh is ex-AT Kearney and Jai Raj Gupta has founded a successful venture Shaadionline in the past.
The TripShelf team at the recently concluded OTM Mumbai
Tour operators can list their holiday packages on TripShelf and travellers can discover, compare, and buy these packages from them. The company specialises in curating high-quality tour operators on the platform and providing a combination of budget and luxury holiday packages to popular destinations. The platform lets customers compare data listed on the online marketplace and once selected, the customer is directed to the supplier’s website for bookings.
TripShelf’s USP is the machine learning tools adopted to make it easier and faster for tour operators to focus on the customers who are going to convert. The company markets their packages, provides them with high-quality leads, and through a single-window, real-time CRM, helps them manage those leads better. From customer data and call logs, to conversion predictability score and custom templates for quotes, TripShelf’s suite of tools keeps operators ahead of the curve. Additionally, tour operators can also use the portal for launches and promotions.
The company claims to have more than 500 tour operators on its platform, selling more than 1700 holiday packages. In December 2016, TripShelf raised INR 1.6 crore in pre-Series A round of funding, from GEMS Advisory and venture capital fund Quarizon.
