In a bid to get better commissions and revenues, Tripshelf, a year-old holiday-package aggregator, is roping in international tour operators to its marketplace.

The Gurgaon-based start-up is targeting tour operators from countries which issue visa on arrival with English as the preferred language — such as Sri Lanka, Maldives and Hong Kong — to remove barriers while booking packages.

“We do not want to be bound by geographies, and international tours operators can play around with higher margins, between 20-25 per cent, if they were to sell directly through our marketplace without going through layers of local agents. We also end up getting better revenues with almost 10 per cent higher commissions than the local travel companies,” said Dhruv Raj Gupta, co-founder and CEO, Tripshelf.

The company has already got on board international tour operators such as Lanka Tours and Travels, and Sanya Tours in China.

“We have many offline international operators on our platform. We expect to take up the number of operators from the current 375 to 1,000 in the next six months, of which about 20 per cent will comprise international firms,” he added.

Currently, the firm has tie-ups with offline tour operators such as Tui and Flight Shop, and is in talks to bring in bigger players such as Cox & Kings and Thomas Cook. Besides these, online players Ezeego1 and OYO Holidays are also on the platform.

With funding from venture capital fund Quarizon and GEMS Advisory, Tripshelf is now ready to scale up its operations with its AI chatbots.

“We are seeking funds from family offices and micro VCs for our pre-Series A round to raise about $1 million, for marketing and upgrading technology,” Gupta said.

While competition is increasing among travel-based marketplaces, Tripshelf claims the market is large enough to accommodate more players.

“The travel marketplace for leisure holidays is a large space, estimated at ₹35,000 crore. The existing players have managed to get revenues less than ₹5 crore each till last year.”

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