Exploring Uncharted Rural Frontiers

The unknown has always held a sense of aura at the same time inertia with it. One of the areas where this duality exists is when it comes to exploring newer travel destinations. Reasons for this could range from simply being unaware about the destination to uncertainty regarding logistics, accommodation options, facilities, activities and quality levels among other things. With rural areas constituting a significant chunk of India’s geographic landscape the need to allay such concerns and showcase unexplored rural destinations is pressing.

Precisely, a cause upon which the Rural Tourism Network Enterprises (RTNE) team has dedicated itself for; it works in the Rural Tourism space to address the gaps in the supply chain and identifies business opportunities.

The RTNE started its foray into the rural tourism space with an extensive survey of the rural landscape looking at various business models. To understand the weakness and opportunities, the team had a series of interactions with industry leaders and came up with an opportunity matrix on social-economic parameters. This also helped them in defining the rural tourism supply chain and to identify critical gaps leading to inefficiencies.

To eliminate inefficiencies in the rural tourism supply chain, RTNE proposed to build a platform to be shared across destinations and markets, acting as a connecting bridge for the property owners, the travel agents and the customers. The platform stands for certain minimum ‘Standards’ & ‘Best Rates’. A platform that will address multiple issues like booking and payment solutions, unavailability of real-time inventory, unavailability of budget accommodations and quality of service levels. On this platform RTNE has adopted a not so popular uniform transaction fee model, instead of charging a transaction fee based on percentage of room rates – to ensure transparency and equality. Even at low margins, RTNE firmly believes in commercial viability of this model at a large scale.

RTNE is testing the viability of the idea in Sindhudurg District (Maharashtra), and in a short span of time has scaled up to cover all the five major tourism destinations [Malvan, Vengurla, Shiroda, Sawantwadi, Amboli] in the districts.

Beach escapades at Sindhudurg

RTNE team physically surveyed more than 100 accommodation options and classified them based on quality parameters and connected more than 30 properties to travel agents [more than 90 agents as of now as compared to 5 agents actively selling Sindhudurg earlier] selling or interested in selling Sindhudurg through a technology platform. A connect which would not have been possible earlier but for the RTNE’s initiative.

Accommodation Options

Puppet Show at Sindhudurg

The Konkan region comprising of Sindhudurg, Ratnagiri & Raigadh districts is sold as a package, and therefore to cross-sell, RTNE is planning to expand to the other two districts of Konkan by replicating the model. RTNE is also looking for partners to scale up through the franchisee route.

The team behind RTNE comprises of Karmveer Rathore, Saurabh Jha and Gaurav Dhingra involved in transforming these ideas into viable business opportunities.