Aamir Khan as Brand Ambassador

Happy Independence day to all of you!

It was good to hear that Tourism Ministry has roped in Bollywood hero Aamir Khan to promote tourism in India. Khan will promote for both domestic and international travelers.

The Bollywood hero has been roped in by the tourism ministry to be the face of its brand campaign 'Incredible India' to showcase the country's rich heritage and culture and the message, 'Athithi Devo Bhava' (guest is god).

More than the involvement of Aamir Khan, I was pleased to see that tourism is finally getting attention of government. A cursory look at the India's tourist places is enough for anyone to figure out that tourism has never been a top agenda for governments in India. While almost every other country understand the importance of tourism, India hasn't realized the full potential even after 61 years of independence.

In my visits to European countries and US, and even Thailand, it was pleasing to see how they take care of the tourists and various tourist places. Every important place has a tourist information center ready to help visitors with information, maps and other resources. Tourist sites are well maintained. Convenience and security of tourists is thought of.

It'll take a lot of time for central and state governments In India to reach the level of engagement governments in other countries show, but I see this as a positive sign. If we can address a few more critical issues of visitor safety, maintenance of tourist places, sufficient infrastructure, I have no doubt India will emerge as one of the top tourist destination in the world.

Must See India at Startup Saturday

We presented at Startup Saturday at Bangalore last Saturday. Those who missed, check out the update at HeadStart.

Overall, it was great discussion. It was good to see that lots of people found the quality of information excellent while many saw potential in the trip planning tool. From our side, we are working on both the sides equally vigorously as they complement each other and are equally important in providing a complete solution to travelers. On the other hand, it also means that there is scope for improvement on both parts so that more users find them useful while planning travel in India.

Another important discussion point was the positive role of community and how it can be extremely helpful in travel planning. It was mentioned that sometimes fellow travelers can give you tips which no book or site covers. We are big believers of this concept and aim to utilize this power of community to augment our own research. One of the features that'll go live later this week is selective hand-picked blogs from internet world. This is one of the many steps from our side to bring the community power to other travelers.

The two biggest gaps that we are set out to fill in current Indian travel space are the lack of
1. Exhaustive information
2. End-to-end solution

To plan your travel, you need good set of information. For this, we rely on two sources - our own research and other travelers. We spend enormous amount of time researching and reviewing articles and are planning to add external blogs apart from the ones from users on our site.

While there are many sites which are individually good, an end-to-end solution is lacking. We see ourselves as a service above the existing solutions and that is why our approach is to be as inclusive as possible and not to replace your current preferred sites (like Flickr, Picasa, Blogger). Our features like collection of photos from Flickr for each destination, ability to link them on trip pages, blog import - are aimed at this vision.

Finally, I would like to reiterate our goal - to make it easy to travel in India. We are set out to

• save your time by providing all information and tools at one place
  
• give you peace of mind by making sure you have complete and reliable information
• make your travel fun
  

We have quite a few exciting ideas in our feature list, and coupled with the HeadStart discussion, you'll see lots of new things coming out in next few days. While we roll out new features, we'll be interested in knowing how we are doing - do get in touch with your wish list and feedback.