Mumbai: India's latest airline Vistara may have to reduce its price gap with rivals, market itself more aggressively and scale up fast before it can expect healthy sales on its flights, said travel company executives and experts.
"From what we have seen so far, Vistara's sales could have been much better, given the formidable product," said Manoj Samuel, ED at Riya Travels, one of India's biggest brick-and-mortar travel agents. Vistara — a joint venture airline between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines — currently has 10 operations in the country, from Delhi to Ahmedabad and Mumbai counted with return legs. It operates 148-seater planes which make for a daily total inventory of 1,480 seats on sale.
Data collated from the top five online and brick-and-mortar travel agents showed their daily sales do not exceed 300 seats. A chunk of Vistara's sales comes from its own website whose data ET didn't have access to. "Customers, especially corporate travellers, aren't yet very excited with Vistara," said Manoj Chacko, CEO at Kuoni Business Travel, while acknowledging that "the Singapore Airlines and Tata group pedigree gives it a high degree of credibility among corporate customers".
19/01/15 Economic Times
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"From what we have seen so far, Vistara's sales could have been much better, given the formidable product," said Manoj Samuel, ED at Riya Travels, one of India's biggest brick-and-mortar travel agents. Vistara — a joint venture airline between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines — currently has 10 operations in the country, from Delhi to Ahmedabad and Mumbai counted with return legs. It operates 148-seater planes which make for a daily total inventory of 1,480 seats on sale.
Data collated from the top five online and brick-and-mortar travel agents showed their daily sales do not exceed 300 seats. A chunk of Vistara's sales comes from its own website whose data ET didn't have access to. "Customers, especially corporate travellers, aren't yet very excited with Vistara," said Manoj Chacko, CEO at Kuoni Business Travel, while acknowledging that "the Singapore Airlines and Tata group pedigree gives it a high degree of credibility among corporate customers".
19/01/15 Economic Times
