Being an authority as a travel partner key to trust for visa: Atlys’ Santosh Hegde

Yet, as more Indians travel to exotic destinations, they are realizing the complexity of securing a visa and the pain of failing to get one even after hotels and flights are booked. So, how does a company such as Atlys deal with a barrage of rich, disappointed customers

Santosh Hegde, head of marketing at Atlys, talks about the clutter in travel marketing, the rise of artifical intelligence (AI), and how to handle irate customers with care. Edited excerpts:

Despite rising costs, it is hard for any brand to bypass performance marketing on Meta and Google. As a niche travel services company, how do you navigate this?

This problem has been bothering a lot of marketeers in the new era. Now, in the travel sector, things work a little differently. About 30 million Indians travel every year and take between 1.2 to 1.4 trips a annually. This means around 70% Indians are traveling only once a year.

So, there will always be a set of consumers in the market looking for a solution like, say, getting a visa. But at a given point of time, only 8-10% of potential customers will be in the market. For us, the role of performance marketing is to bring that 8-10% of the total customer base into our platform as quickly as possible. But the lowest possible cost of customer acquisition or CAC lies in organic marketing.

But how do you measure the performance of organic marketing, or a brand marketing campaign?

Organic marketing tends to be expensive and so not a lot of people want to invest in it. Also, brand building is often confused with heavy-duty media. But there is a distinction between building a brand and doing it on an expensive platform.

The problem of measuring a brand marketing campaign is not as much about the return on investment as it is about the time period for which you are parking brand investment funds.

If the number of points of purchase are only 1-2 a year (such as the number of international trips taken in a year), then your horizon to measure a brand marketing campaign can be much longer.

Search is where most consumer journeys begin in the business of travel. But video, and now AI, has completely disrupted search. How has it changed your marketing strategy?

New channels have taken over our sector in a major way. Most searches in the travel sector now start on YouTube and Instagram. You would possibly see Instagram for inspiration, then YouTube to put together a detailed travel plan. Influencer marketing channels have been important for us from the beginning—60% of our marketing budget goes into the content and influencer ecosystem.

It was easy for influencers to experience our product firsthand, but we realized this marketing channel could be very expensive. So, 15 months back, we began the hard work of building our own channels on both Instagram and YouTube from scratch. With a mix of branded and organic content, we have scaled to a community of 1.2 million followers across both channels.

These channels are good for distribution, and they offset the cost of media while helping us build our credentials as an authority on travel. If we don't come across as an authority as a travel partner, with useful tips and comprehensive information, then you won’t trust Atlys with your visa.

How are you handling the shift in search to AI platforms?

AI has made it much simpler to not do the grunt work. But something interesting I have noticed when it comes to travel planning, is that customers still hold the exploration and planning of a trip very dear. I don’t think customers are willing to relinquish control for planning a trip, which is often as exciting as the trip itself.

For example, someone going to Japan is not really expecting a detailed 7-day itinerary for Japan from an AI platform, but expects AI to give them options and details that help make their planning easier. Also, people still rely on Google searches because none of the embassies and visa processing companies are deeply integrated with AI platforms yet.

Visas can be rejected and the decision is at an embassy’s discretion. But angry customers have often complained about Atlys online. How do you deal with customer expectations when the end result isn't entirely in your control?

The ultimate decision of visa approval rests with consulates and a large chunk of customers already understands this. We have processed over 2 million visa applications since inception, so we understand the strength of application building and the biggest reason for rejection. We also have a lot of folks in our team who have worked with consulates and visa processing partners, so they have seen this process up close.

Yes, there will be a percentage of customers who will get rejected, and people don’t react well to rejection. When rejection happens, we are extremely transparent with them. We recognize the importance of anxiety in the whole process, since international travel is done once or twice a year.

Customers are also anxious to know the status of the application, so we have built a number of tools for customers to track their application in real time.

What happens when complaints from many rejected customers pile up on social media, like they recently did on X and LinkedIn?

Platforms like Twitter and Reddit are driven by algorithms who tend to drive negativity. We process 99.9% of applications on time. You may also believe that if you escalate on social media, you may get something in return. It is important to acknowledge that.

But for us, the redressal process starts long before a customer goes public with a complaint. We have tools to gauge customer mood and we can predict when a dissatisfied customer may leave our ecosystem and take to an external platform.

But once it is already on social media, we make sure any customer finds a response within 30 minutes. On X and Reddit, we have tools to flag these complaints off in real time.