Today, Arzoo.com is India's leading Travel Portal. The company is based in Mumbai and co-founded by Mr. Sabeer Bhatia along with a few technocrats from Silicon Valley in 2006. Apart from offering Online Flight and Hotel booking facility, Arzoo.com also offers largest inventory of package tours under Domestic Holidays, International Holidays and Weekend Getaways. “Infact, it offers all travel related services including Corporate Travel, Group Bookings, Car Hire, Travel Insurance, Visa and Passport services under one roof with over 150 professionals working 24 X 7 to service its customers with maximum efficiency,” says Sameer Patil, Head, Marketing, Arzoo.

LCC carriers have fuelled the growth of online Travel in India and with the increase in broadband penetration and growth of e-commerce, Arzoo.com is well poised to be a dominant player in online Travel space. Some well thought of strategies sets apart Arzoo.com in the highly competitive Online Travel space. States Patil, “While many of its competitors have burnt their cash reserves mindlessly by going overboard in their customer acquisition activities and offering cash back schemes, Arzoo.com has believed that there is no real customer acquisition and loyalty in online space.” Research indicates that most of the online customers simply search and compare the fares on three different portals and transact at the one offering the cheapest deal at that time. Arzoo.com has also been modest in its marketing spends by employing an efficient ROI model as compared to multi-million dollar advertising budgets flexed by its competitors.

In fact, the real reason for Arzoo.com’s success has been its nimbleness and flexibility to quickly adapt to the ever-changing market dynamics. As the online Travel B2C space in India quickly started getting over crowded with competitors, Arzoo.com started its US portal. It also offered Corporate Travel Services by opening sales offices in New Delhi, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Pune and started getting assured corporate travel and group booking business, which is not season dependent. “This kept the revenues flowing in, all year round,” says Patil. In 2008, Arzoo.com also launched its robust B2B platform and now has more than 3000 small and medium travel agents in its network who book Flights, Hotels and Holidays for their customers from Arzoo.com on a daily basis. It also launched its affiliate marketing services by offering white label solutions of online flight and hotel bookings facility to anyone having a website & looking to monetize their websites and earn additional revenues.

Even though today, with recession looming large in the face of Indian Economy, Arzoo.com has its plan ready to beat the market with some innovative product offerings like Arzoo Holiday Pack which is positioned as low cost and highly flexible Holiday Incentive and Promotions program targeted at Corporates. Arzoo.com is also coming up with a franchise model to spread its wings further and reap benefits of a salient brand built over the period of time. “Today, Arzoo.com stands on the threshold of entering its next level and leading the online Travel business in a formidable way,” concludes Patil.