The platform will help travel agents serve the needs of rural customers at every district, block and gram panchayat level. It has been launched in partnership with Dilip Kumar Modi’s firm Spice Money (part of Spice Group) a rural fintech firm and Sonu Sood who is also the director of Travel Union.
Sood said that during the lockdowns he had first-hand experience of the challenges that rural Indians face when it comes to travel as well as the struggles of small business owners. According to him, the rural travel sector has been unorganized for a long time, with hardly any player focusing solely on Bharat.
“Travel Union aims to create a close-knit community of travel agents as Travel Union Members, and pave new paths of self-employment and self-reliance opportunities for those joining the network. Travel Union will allow rural travel agents to cater to all their customers’ travel needs easily and empower them with high margins,” he added.
Travel Union will cover services across airlines, railways, hotels, wholesalers and aggregators making it the super-aggregator platform to meet the travel needs of the rural citizens. It will be a member-only platform with no onboarding cost. The business model of the platform is commission-based. The platform will leverage the 5 lakh retail partners of the Spice Group.
“We get the net rates (B2B rates) from all suppliers and we pass them on to the travel agent. There’s no added mark up on that. What we earn is based on the business volumes we do which is called Productive Link Bonus (PLB) at the end of month, quarter and year. At the transaction level, there is nothing (mark up or convenience fee) from our side or suppliers so that agents get the best rate. However, they can go ahead and charge service charge based on his relationship with the customer,” said Dilip Modi, Founder, Travel Union.
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