Nina Liu
To: Rohan Tandon
On: Dakshina - A foreign traveler’s guide to Tamil Nadu
Rohan wrote in the introductory page of his website that: “My site will be aimed at providing realistic, useful information on how a foreign traveler can make his journey as efficient, safe, and enjoyable as possible.” He breaks down the process of traveling into separate sections, namely, transportation, routine arrangement, accommodations and miscellaneous links and tips. In his plan, all the different choices in these sections are fully displayed to the viewers and can be chosen as “commodities” into online shopping chart. In this way, travelers will get their customized travel plans and print them out for reference. His innovative idea is to set free travelers from the reign of travel agencies and make “self-help” travel planning easier and more feasible to common people and at the meanwhile, reduce travel costs.
I think Rohan’s idea of travel planning will definitely be welcomed by its potential market in the future. As online shopping becomes more and more popular, people are used to “dragging everything you like into the shopping chat”. Rohan’s website is somehow embedded with this spirit. In his website Dakshina, travelers don’t choose any pre-designed travel routine as that from a travel agency but can make their own routine according to their personal tastes and purposes. They also don’t have to catch the schedule of the day agreed by a 20+ people group. These benefits accords with the trend of future; people ask for more efficient and personalized service.
Besides the optimal flexibility of this “self-help” travel planning, this website also offers great opportunity to reduce travel costs. In Rohan’s plan, he will put together all the information about accommodation deals, tourist sites, and travel advice and provide price comparisons to travelers. Once Dakshina is loaded, travelers to Tamil Nadu will get everything they need before they go in a “one-stop” manner provided that the website has all the links to airline companies, hotels, local attractions. In this way, Dakshina is also quite similar in function to a travel search engine.
As an unbiased travel adviser, a very important thing is that Dakshina should provide credible information and let the travelers decide which one to go for. Since Dakshina is providing a list of “ranked” travel options to the travelers, I am wondering how these entries will be ranked. As for hotels, they can be ranked by their international “starred” standard, but how about other options? I believe that the evaluation of many travel options can only be based on personal experience which varies from case to case. Even in the case of hotels, people are always struggling with the trade-off of price and quality. Therefore, some cheap hotels might actually be more popular among young travelers. As a travel information website, Dakshina is facing a broad array of travelers who have different purposes of travel. I think it might be a better way to provide only detailed data, and definable descriptions of travel options and maybe let the “free forum” attached bare the task of recommendation and evaluation.
Finally, once well developed, Dakshina will be a very powerful travel research tool and personal planner for travelers to Tamil Nadu. As Rohan said in his business plan, the success of this program is also based on the infrastructural development of Tamil Nadu area. It is obviously very easy to foresee and plan everything before take off when your destination is Chicago, but if you travel to a mountain area in the country, it’s definitely impossible for you take into account everything beforehand. The comparably harsh road condition, weather, safety concerns and daily facilities will be uncontrollable facts on your way.
In all, Rohan’s business plan is very promising in the global fever of traveling. I will definitely be an honored user myself of Dakshina if I have a chance to travel around in the future.
