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For Honest Travel Information: Sites to watch this summer

Hindustan Times May 23, 2007

OkTataByebye charts out some interesting plans

Social Travel
The zany website embellished with truck art, Oktatabyebye.com, which came into being last year for an online travel reality show contest, has been re-launched as a travel-based social networking site.

The new website is no longer a mere platform for travel bloggers. It has become more interactive, where members can post in their travel experiences, seek travel guidance from other members and seek travel companions to bring down their travel budgets. The website also allows members to rate hotels, destinations and other user generated content; besides uploading route maps, photos and videos. Content can be tagged for easy search. More active participation would result in “reward points” that can be redeemed for prizes like cell-phones and cameras.

Reasoning out the revamp of the website, Sachin Bhatia, co-founder of Oktatabyebye (an off-shoot of MakeMyTrip), says, “We’d tasted success with the website early, and wanted to make it more interactive, based on the feedback we got from our users. The only things we’ve retained are the blogs and the name and the logo, which has been liked by one and all.”

Oktatabyebye claims to have over 6,000 active members. The company has also launched an Oktatabyebye toolbar for browsers, which allows users to highlight any travel-related content on the web and store it for future retrieval.

To remain unbiased and to ensure that MakeMyTrip’s interests do not clash with the website, Parthasarathi Mandal, senior manager, marketing, Oktatabyebye promises to have no mention of the parent website on the latter, “except that the name may be hidden somewhere in the ‘About Us’ page. We don’t intend to intervene in the community, which will remain unbiased. The members will contribute to the growth of the website.”

“We don’t intend to monetize the website for the first year, basically to see the user response,” says Bhatia/ “Once we get a good response, we may allow linking to hotels and airlines websites on the basis of pay-per-click. We’ll also showcase destinations after tie-ups with various tourist departments and cruise companies,” he elaborates.

Oktatabyebye, though, would get enough space on makemytrip.com. “We do not have any marketing budget for Oktatabyebye. We’ll optimize the website on Google very heavily. As a starting point, we’ll be reaching out to about four-lakh-people-strong database of MakeMyTrip,” adds Bhatia.

Oktatabyebye has also tied up with MTV to power the latter’s travel blog – MTV aati kya? (mtvindia.com/aatikya)

Oktatabyebye.com came into the limelight when it announced a contest as part of its launch last year. The winner was given Rs. 50,000 for a 15-day journey to the chosen destinations and was also given a laptop and a digital camera to create and maintain a blog on the trip.

The Brand Reporter April 16, 2007

OkTataByebye revamped to enable planning of trips

MakeMyTrip’s travel based social networking site OkTaTaByeBye has been relaunched in beta. The search has been revamped to categorize results according to content on their site; content is also tagged. More on the feature here. Talk Junction, allows users to ask for travel advice; video albums have been added. Monetization could be by means of tie-ups with hotels, travel agents and online ticketing sites- but plans haven’t been firmed up yet. They already have a tie-up with MTV.

The site allows destinations and hotels to be ranked and reviewed...there could be conflict of interest, in case of a bad review of a hotel that the site ties-up with. I liked the feature that allows users to plan events with either a select group, or invite others to join them as Travel Buddies - that’s what existing travel communities (examples: Indiamike, Indiatree, Lets Go, Himalaya Trekkers) facilitate.

The changes, said Parthasarthy Mandal of OkTaTaByeBye, have been made based mainly on user feedback. It’s still in beta, and out of shape with Firefox and Opera. While the site is useful for ‘power users’, I think the amount of content can initially be overwhelming for newbies. One challenge will be getting ‘power users’ to switch from blogs, and groups on Yahoo, Google and Orkut. Incidentally, on Saturday, I saw an auto rickshaw in Delhi with an OkTaTaByeBye sticker...

Conten Sutra April 4, 2007

Online travel company MakeMyTrip.com has relaunched its travel community portal Oktatabyebye.com that enables users to ask and answer travel related questions, and share their travel experiences, travelogues, photos, videos, destination features, hotel reviews and recommendations with friends, family and other members of the site.

On the Oktatabyebye’s new design, Sachin Bhatia, co-founder, MakeMyTrip, has said, “The site has been kept simple and is not overtly designed. We have kept it just as a community site.” To MMT’s credit, they have taken good care of the usability part, explaining explicitly each and every feature of Oktatabyebye.com so that users don’t have to guess what a particular feature is all about before they could use it.

While talking about the Oktatabyebye’s monetisation, Bhatia has said, “The idea is not to monetise. Unlike other travel community sites, who are trying to send traffic to a travel portal, you will not find here any link with MMT.” According to Bhatia, the company may consider linking Oktatabyebye.com with the suppliers, including hotels, government tourism boards, MMT and other online travel agents, “but that call has not been taken yet.”

Comment
Why is oktatabyebye.com a big deal. there was always Mouthshut.com and they're the best in the user interaction review space. yes they do not focus on just travel but thats the beauty, there you can get every information, share your photos and videos and they're quite good at this. no hidden agenda unlike MMT and oktatabyebye
Posted by rajeev 4/9/2007

Marvellous space. Easy to use, interactive and a travel enthusiasts' dream come true
Posted by Nivedita 4/5/2007

Alootechie.com April 4, 200

Oktatabyebye.com – is India’s first online travel community website. This community is all about travel in India, and the best place for travel enthusiasts to find and share real travel experiences, insights, honest reviews and unbiased travel advice on India.

Oktatabyebye revolutionises how people find and share travel information.Unlike other travel information sites, social networking and information sharing - through travelogs (travel blogs/ travelogues), destination features, shared photos & video, travel buddies (trips) and hotel reviews among members, of oktatabyebye’s community of travel enthusiasts - provides friends, family, other like-minded travellers and travel shoppers with a more personalised and informative experience than currently exists online. Reviews, recommendations, votes and ranks ensure that the information is always up-to-date, useful and remains transparent.

Late in 2006, inspired by the growing wanderlust of the Indian traveler and his desire to share (and read about others’) travel experiences, was launched www.oktatabyebye.com - an exciting new online community that connects and lets travel enthusiasts find and share detailed advice and experiences on places & travels in India (or around the world). Our vision is to become the best site for relevant, detailed, unbiased, user-contributed travel information.

Enabled through Web 2.0 technology and tools - Members can create their personal travelogs with journals and recommendations, route maps, personal travel maps, unlimited photo and video galleries, recommendations on hotels and places to stay, food and places to eat. Members can also highlight & save favourite and relevant content and rate, tag and comment on other members'' experiences throughout the site.

Prominently featured on OkTataByebye.com are

Travelogs (travelogues): featured are day-by-day, place-by-place personal accounts of trips and journeys by real travelers. From the typical weekend getaway to extended trips these individual travelogues are rich in practicality, perspectives, and details and give great ideas for trips.

Talk Junction: In Oktatabyebye Talk Junction are 2 sections – Queries - where travelers are asking and answering thousands of destination and interest based travel-related questions every day and Travel-talk - where travel enthusiasts are sharing travel talk, anecdotes and experiences or simply some useful tips with friends.

Travel Buddies: Here’s where you could search for buddies for your trips, or join trips you like. Put out budget and time-based alerts for trips. A great place for friends and families to plan trips together - to make new friends, connect and build your network.

Hotels: Member contributed reviews of all types of lodging, across destinations in India feature here. From small and personal home-stays to the high-end hotels, real member reviews help give an honest, balanced and unbiased picture. Updates, ranking and comments by other members keep the content relevant and transparent.

Destination Features: Places as experienced by travellers. These destination features cover must see attractions, the offbeat, recommendations on things to do, places to eat - honest advice, unbiased reviews, useful tips and insights by fellow travelers.

Picture Gallery: thousands of photos and videos of India taken by real travelers. From holiday destinations, people and culture to personal trips and friends – they capture the fascinating beauty of India through the eyes of the travel enthusiast • Events Calendar: Here’s where a member can write about and share, find or ask alerts to, a multitude of events, festivals or festivities. It’s a great way to share and enjoy, inform and stay informed on the vast number of events in the country that appeal to and are a must-experience for travel enthusiasts.

Roads and Rides: Featured here are road trips as penned by compulsive bikers. Here’s where you will find the truly awesome ‘Great Indian Roadtrip’ - 20,000 km of incredible India covered by friends or the inspiring Freya’s Diaries – travel tales from the interiors of India.

Rewards: A small attempt at giving back, creating & maintaining a competitive atmosphere within the community. It deals with community awards and contests, goodies that can be got by collecting ByeBuy (activity) points, as well as exclusive member benefits that like travel guides, travel maps, routes and shared itineraries.

The majority of travel information sites currently available online, focus on price, or volume availability, or provide very basic, generic and anonymous information. In contrast, we saw a need to provide relevant, qualitative information to travelers. Oktatabyebye''s rapidly growing community is proof that we are fulfilling this need.

Oktatatbyebye.com leverages social networking, reviews, blogging, picture and video sharing and a web 2.0 enabled system of peer ranks, votes and comments to provide a more personalized, honest, unbiased and informative experience to travel enthusiasts and provides quality information that helps people plan trips through the insights and recommendations of like-minded travelers.

Intelligent-traveller April 4, 2007

Oktatabyebye.com, which was launched as a travel blog last year by MakeMyTrip.com, has been relaunched as a full-fledged travel community. While the earlier website was a platform for bloggers to post their travel travails, the new website is a community of members which rates, tags and comments on various aspects of travel. This includes opinions on hotels, places to eat, festivals and so on.

The website is still in the beta phase and new features are being added as membership grows. Currently, there are about 5,000 to 6,000 active, contributing members. The blogs have not been completely done away with. People can now post their travelogues. There’s even a section called Travel Buddies, where people can look for fellow travellers interested in joining them for a trip.

There are tangible and intangible rewards for members. While the ‘awards’ are based on the ratings of members, there are Nokia phones and Olympus cameras up for grabs.

Since the community is an offshoot of MakeMyTrip, will there be a connection between the two? No, says Sachin Bhatia, co-founder and chief marketing officer of MakeMyTrip, “We don’t intend to intervene in the community, which will remain unbiased. The members will contribute to the growth of the website.”

Bhatia adds that there will be a business element after a year or so. “We are looking at tie-ups with suppliers and hotels, after we have built up the numbers,” he says. So far, the company claims to have received about 20,000 pictures, 200 hotel reviews and 150 travelogues.

There will be no major promotion for Oktatabyebye.com except intimations to MakeMyTrip.com members, about four lakh in number. The company expects the site to be out of beta in about 45 days.

Agency faqs April 2, 2007

I just chanced upon the beta version of MTVs travel community ‘Aati Kya’, which is powered by the MakeMyTrip.com’s social networking portal OkTataByeBye. We’d wondered about what OkTataByeBye has been upto, when Yatra’s social net Raahi was launched. Interestingly, this switch also means that MTV has dropped TravelGuru as its travel partner: MTV Backpack, which was powered by TravelGuru, now gives us a ”page not found”.

‘Aati Kya’ has VJs blogging, and there are airfares from MakeMyTrip displayed on the side. If you remember, I’d asked about why there isn’t a Yahoo Answers kind of model in the travel social media space. Well, this one has ’Ask a question‘. There’s also a game called Mumbai Se Goa Tak, apparently based on the classic Frogger, a fishing game, and then some others that I remember playing some ten years ago.

This could be the beginning of other tie-ups for OkTataByeBye; question is - where one travel community didn’t really take off after creating that initial buzz, can many? Maybe tie-ups will get them greater visibility...

Content Sutra March 29, 2007