Taking advantage of the growing demand for online travel services, Bravofly, the European online travel agency that specializes in selling low cost flights, seems to have succeeded in its entry on the Russian market. Already operating in a dozen Western countries, from Italy to Germany to the United States, the agregator of low cost air ticket offers launched its Russian site in the summer of last year under the Russian brand of ‘Bravoavia.ru’.
But low cost is not really low cost in Russia, admitted Andriy Shekhovtsov, Bravofly’s COO for Ukraine and Russia, in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
“The local low-cost market is almost non-existent with the failure of companies like Avianova and Skyexpress, perhaps due to pressures from their traditional competitors. Now there are no actual low-cost air fares, only medium- and high-cost offers for domestic flights.”
“For outbound flights, Russian customers can enjoy medium-cost offers from such airlines as Airberlin.com, Airbaltics, or Windjets,” Shekhovtsov continues. “This is what we sell a lot of to our customers in Russia, in addition to flights from regular airlines like Aeroflot.”
Bravoavia.ru started to gain traction immediately after the end of its test period in late 2011. “Then, in January and February, we sold up to 40% more than planned,” Shekhovtsov claims, suggesting that Bravovaia’s “very interesting pricing” was part of the explanation for this success.
Russian-style money back procedures
Bravoavia.ru also invested significant amounts in online marketing, essentially SEM, with a particular focus on Google. “We acknowledge that Yandex is ahead of Google on the domestic market, but our first steps with the Russian search engine were more difficult than expected, so we had to suspend operations for some time to finetune the approach,” Shekhovtsov explains.
Bravofly is currently experiencing an overload of calls to its hotline, sometimes requiring customers to wait a significant amount of time for an available operator due to the unexpectedly high number of calls. There are also delays with the money back procedure, which is particularly long with Russian banks.
Despite the difficulties early on, “We are perhaps already number 5 or number 6 among online air ticket sellers,” Shekhovtsov claims. “It is really hard to tell precisely, since there is no publicly available data about the Russian online air tickets market.”
Interestingly, almost all of Bravofly’s operations to locate the site in Russia have been conducted from the company’s representative office in Kiev, Ukraine. “Russian is a native language for many Ukrainians, and operating costs in Kiev are lower than in Moscow,” says Bravofly CEO Teodoro D’Ambrosio.
However, Bravoavia.ru has relied on a Moscow-based partner to organize some marketing partnerships.
The Ukrainian market itself is smaller than the Russian one, and the country is “behind by a couple of years in terms of its Internet development,” Shekhovtsov believes. “But in terms of low cost air fares, the Ukrainian market is developing quickly. Wizzair is there already, and Vueling and Norwergian Shuttle are making their first steps.”
- RUSSIAN E-COMMERCE REPORT 2012 – The total volume of Russian online retail reached 310 billion rubles, a little more than $10 billion, in 2011, up 25% from the previous year. EWDN’s research study of Russian e-commerce, which includes an analysis of the travel segment, will be available soon. To receive free insights or to order the full version, please contact us at [email protected].
