The key value proposition put forward by OTAs was the convenience of comparing prices across different hotels, flight companies and other travel related service providers at one place. While travelers were already enjoying the service, next came the meta search engines to make the travel search experience even better. Users found meta search engines as an easier way of finding OTAs in different parts of the world with ready price comparison. With meta search engines, everything felt like just one click far away. As technology and business dynamics continue to evolve, the relationship between meta search engines and travel agencies is evolving too. Here are some of the changes that we’re noticing in the travel domain, especially around OTAs and metasearch engines.
A meta search engine is a tool that aggregates data from other search engines in order to produce results to the user. In the travel industry, meta search engines aggregate rates and availability of hotels from different sources, mainly OTAs but sometimes directly from the hotels. This makes it easier for users to find a hotel by simply entering their journey dates and comparing between the different options provided. This also helps users quickly find their ‘type’ of hotel within a few mouse clicks. Meta search engines started mushrooming soon after OTAs came into the picture in travel industry. In a recent survey conducted by TripAdvisor, about 50% of the respondents agreed that the convenience provided by meta search engines is invaluable.
While OTAs have tie ups with the hotels and aggregate data directly from hotel websites, Meta search engines do not have any such strings attached to them. They aggregate the data directly from OTAs and manage to grab the top spots in search engines and position themselves as a one stop destination for users. This has been the reason for friction between OTAs and metasearch engines for quite some time.
The more tech-savvy users check about 20 sites to ensure that they are getting the best deal for their travel and accommodation needs, which means a lot of manual research. To strengthen this point, a study by Google showed that about 60% of the users began and ended their travel searches in different devices. This pain point is exactly what meta search engines are trying to eliminate. Meta search engines are freeing travelers from this tiring travel search bottleneck by providing all the options they need at one place. With newer technologies to their assistance, meta search engines are upping their game by implementing semantic search features to ensure accurate price comparisons with user preferences.
When OTAs first came into the picture, the tech barrier was significantly higher than it is now. This helped OTAs flourish well and they did make investments to scale up further and gain reasonable returns. However, many OTAs did not have the level of backing needed to provide optimum product connectivity and maintain a position among the leaders. By 2005, the Meta search engine era started. Meta search sites bridged the connectivity gap by aggregating deals from OTAs for the same product/service.
Although slowly, OTAs started catching up with the product connectivity offered by the metasearch engines. This is when the conflict started. Meta search engines seemed like a threat to the OTAs when it came to competing for the top spot in the google search results. However, things have changed in the last few years.
Although it might look like a battlefield between OTAs and metasearch engines from the distance, popular OTA sites like Expedia and Priceline have started embracing the metasearch model and even started investing in metasearch channels of their own. Some of the OTAs even started providing a price comparison feature similar to the metasearch offering, thus creating a hybrid of OTAs and metasearch engines.
Although there are pros and cons to both the models, hotels find metasearch to be an attractive source of opportunity. This is because eliminating OTAs would mean cost on commissions saved for them and direct dealing with the guests, which will help the hotels in building a relationship with their customers.
OTAs are busy spending big on marketing which mostly involves inspiring potential customers to dream about travel and spend on luxurious hotels. This has been helping them attract customers and also create new ones. On the other hand, meta search engines are focusing on having a smooth integration between their booking engine and that of hotels’ so that the user experience is seamless. Gaining a top spot in the traditional search engines is also a challenging task that the meta search companies have in priority.
Metasearch engine Kayak with listings for hotels in Singapore
Meta search engines have equipped themselves with more than just an aggregation and price comparison platform in the last few years. ‘Book now’ is a feature they introduced to strengthen their roots in the travel industry by providing a richer user experience for the users. The ‘book-now’ feature is basically an integration of the booking system of suppliers with that of the Meta search engines and could pose a challenge to the OTA business model. But, recent trends prove this wrong. We see OTAs coexisting with meta search sites without negatively impacting each other’s business models. It is better to view the combined growth of OTAs and metasearch engines from a consumer’s view point, where it can only provide benefits. Both OTAs and metasearch engines can assist travelers by helping them find the best deals while planning their trip.
As prices shown on OTAs change by hours if not minutes, the competition in this domain is hitting peak levels. OTAs are using web crawling services to scrape real time prices from their competitors so as to programatically update their own pricing. Now that travelers have a multitude of options to choose from, having a competitive pricing is extremely important. There are DaaS providers specializing in extracting large amount of data from the web in near real time, consistently. This has significantly contributed to the competitive factor of travel industry. You can learn more about the newest trends impacting online travel agencies in our previous blog post.
Software Engineer – Full time
We’re a team of high-tech Engineers working on fresh big data problems. An integral part of our offerings is web-scale crawl and extraction using cloud computing and machine learning techniques. We’re on a quest for innovative ways to solve the business problems of data acquisition and normalization on the web. Our vision is to make PromptCloud a one-stop brand for data and our growth is geared towards that.
Where we are at PromptCloud- We are a bootstrapped company in the mid-growth phase and are planning to quickly expand (not much in terms of personnel) but heavily with respect to the solutions we can provide to big data problems in the market. We started off with international clients and we have pretty much covered the globe at that.
What PromptCloud expects for this role:
– Sound knowledge of Algorithms and OOP concepts
– Proficiency with Linux/Unix (required)
– Knowledge of any one of the scripting languages – Ruby/Perl/Python
– Graduated from a tier-1 college (IITs, NITs, IIITs, BITs) or you’re dead smart to blow us away with your tech skills
– 1 to 3 years of industry experience in a tech role
– Prior experience with a startup or Big Data technologies is a plus
– Prior exposure to web technologies, Rails, Django is a plus
– Energy and passion for working in a growing company
– Sense of ownership and attention to detailsDevOps experience
– An entrepreneurial and experimental mindset
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
Ruby on Rails Developer – Full time
We’re a team of high-tech Engineers working on fresh big data problems. An integral part of our offerings is web-scale crawl and extraction using cloud computing and machine learning techniques. We’re on a quest for innovative ways to solve the business problems of data acquisition and normalization on the web. Our vision is to make PromptCloud a one-stop brand for data and our growth is geared towards that.
Where we are at PromptCloud- We are a bootstrapped company in the mid-growth phase and are planning to quickly expand (not much in terms of personnel) but heavily with respect to the solutions we can provide to big data problems in the market. We started off with international clients and we have pretty much covered the globe at that.
We’re looking for a Ruby on Rails developer to take over various responsibilities in design and development of rails application. The role involves client side as well as server side expertise.
What PromptCloud expects for this role:
– At least 1-2 year experience working with Ruby on Rails (or Django) and MVC
– Experience working with HTML5, CSS3, JS, jQuery, AJAX, and other web technologies
– Experience working with Linux
– UI/UX Design and front end development experience
– Ability to write well-abstracted, reusable code for various UI components
– Should be willing to work independently and take end-to-end ownership with minimal guidance
– Excellent time-management, multi-tasking, communication and interpersonal skills.
– Must have great design and good documentation skills
Applicants having the following skills will be given preference:
– Knowledge of open source tools such as Firebug, Chrome developer tools
– Experience working with Twitter Bootstrap & Node.JS
– Work independently and end-to-end with minimal guidance
– Ability to write well-abstracted, reusable code
– Excellent time-management, multi-tasking, communication and interpersonal skills
– Must have great design and good documentation skills
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
DevOps Engineer – Full time
We’re a team of high-tech Engineers working on fresh big data problems. An integral part of our offerings is web-scale crawl and extraction using cloud computing and machine learning techniques. We’re on a quest for innovative ways to solve the business problems of data acquisition and normalization on the web. Our vision is to make PromptCloud a one-stop brand for data and our growth is geared towards that.
Where we are at PromptCloud- We are a bootstrapped company in the mid-growth phase and are planning to quickly expand (not much in terms of personnel) but heavily with respect to the solutions we can provide to big data problems in the market. We started off with international clients and we have pretty much covered the globe at that.
Responsibilities:
– Ensure 100% availability and reliability of our service,
– Help the company make optimized infrastructural choices.
– Create and implement tools that manage infrastructure.
– Work independently and end-to-end with minimal guidance.
Skills:
On the system side
– Experience with Puppet/Chef/Ansible, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Git, Graphite and related tools for large-scale systems management
– Experience working with linux system monitoring and analysis
– Good understanding of distributed computing environments
– Open to working non-standard hours in critical situations
– Replication of databases (both relational or NoSQL) across geographical regions using various consistency models
– Experience with package management systems such as APT or RPM
On the development side
– Basic coding/scripting ability in Ruby, Python or any other scripting language
– Write clean, elegant and reusable OO code. This is not a sysadmin job.
– Ability to write well-abstracted, reusable code and good documentation skills
– Some understanding of REST and other web technologies is a plus.
– The ideal candidate for this position should have good attention to details, along with excellent time-management, multi-tasking, communication and interpersonal skills.
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
Marketing Manager – Full time
PromptCloud is looking for a growth hacker to take over responsibilities in developing and executing strategic marketing programs to meet growth objectives, develop market awareness and communicate client results. The analyst works with the Digital and Inbound Marketing Manager and other business segment executives, product management and sales leadership in supporting sales tools to attract, win and retain clients. Essentially, this profile touches all aspects of marketing and business development, thus evolving into being a successful growth-in-charge for the organization.
He/she partners with all functions within marketing as well as key external departments to drive successful, cross-functional marketing and sales initiatives and contributes towards the successful development and maintenance of key performance indicators that lead PromptCloud to 5x growth in the next 3 years.
Desired Skills and Experience:
– Tech (CS) along with an MBA degree from a top B-school
– Minimum 2 years of experience in a marketing/business analyst role
– Good experience in top and bottom level funnels
– Strong business acumen, highly developed analytical skills and recognized for innovative and creative approaches to problem solving
– Inherent empathy for the customer
– Highly professional written and verbal communication skills, along with interpersonal skills
– Hands-on experience with blogging, copywriting, content marketing & PR
– Experience in social media marketing (planning and execution) is a plus
– Experience working with a B2B/enterprise startup is a big plus
– Excellent time-management, multi-tasking and interpersonal skill
Responsibilities include:
– Understanding PromptCloud’s technology well as you progress, and using it to ideate on marketing strategies across geographies
– Performing timely market researches driven towards opening newer marketing and revenue channels that would directly affect technology roadmap (essentially growth hacking) and tracking various growth and marketing initiatives using key metrics customized to PromptCloud’s environment.
– Growing a community of big data enthusiasts on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter, and the technology ecosystem, and prospecting within the group
– Coordinating with vendors on collated improvements to company website via A/B testing, etc. and maintaining the same
– Collaborating with the SEO team on launching and monitoring PPC campaigns
– Creating content for various online and offline channels, and further coordinating with vendors towards this goal
– Publicizing content generated on various online and offline channels, as deemed appropriate with regular research
– Taking end-to-end ownership of tasks with moderate to minimal guidance.
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
(This position is currently inactive, you can still apply if you’re interested.)
PromptCloud is looking for an ambitious content marketing all-rounder who would be responsible for writing well-researched and informative content for the blog, website and other marketing collateral. The person should be an auto-pilot and self- thinker and have strong convictions along with efficient proofreading and paraphrasing skills. There will be a steep learning. As a company, we like to work with people who are smarter than their years, fast learners, and quick thinkers. Responsibility-shirkers need not apply. This is an amazing place to grow rapidly and make a real impact. If you’re someone who doesn’t tolerate low expectations, then you might be the right person for our team.
Job Responsibilities:
– Responsible for generating new opportunities: key business function is prospecting new accounts and also to manage and execute research activities as required to compile successful campaign target lists.
– Responsible for segmenting and identifying qualified outbound leads via various communication channels through in-depth understanding of their use case.
– He/she will assist in expanding the company’s database of prospects.
– He/she will be responsible for retargeting of outbound leads and launching various client-nurturing campaigns and account management including up-sell and cross sell.
– He/she will be responsible for arranging various outbound campaigns for increasing brand awareness and revenue.
Establish annual, quarterly, monthly, or weekly sales and collection plans and prioritize and schedule own –
activities so these targets are met.
– Responsible for responding to RFPs and other queries from outbound leads.
– Advising customers on forthcoming product developments and discussing special promotions.
– Understand PromptCloud’s technology well enough.
Desired skills and experience:
– Should be an MBA with a tech background.
– 2 – 4 years of experience in a similar role.
– Experience of software sales/ business development.
– Should be a Techno functional who can map Technology to Business Processes.
– Excellent written skills and ability to communicate well with clients from various geographies.
– Should have experience in handling customer queries.
– Excellent listening skills.
– Ability to understand customer’s industry and core business processes, and then identify the problems they are facing.
– Ability to understand and describe how solutions and features can address the business issues that customers are facing.
– Target focused individual contributor.
– This is an independent role with minimal guidance / interference so give us a shout only if you can ideate as well as execute end to end.
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
(This position is currently inactive, you can still apply if you’re interested.)
Content Writer & Social Media Marketer – Full time
PromptCloud is looking for an ambitious content marketing all-rounder who would be responsible for writing well-researched and informative content for the blog, website and other marketing collateral. The person should be an auto-pilot and self- thinker and have strong convictions along with efficient proofreading and paraphrasing skills. There will be a steep learning. As a company, we like to work with people who are smarter than their years, fast learners, and quick thinkers. Responsibility-shirkers need not apply. This is an amazing place to grow rapidly and make a real impact. If you’re someone who doesn’t tolerate low expectations, then you might be the right person for our team.
Desired Skills and Experience:
– Excellent written communication skills
– 1-2 years of full-time experience with content writing
– Should have exposure in public writing, blogs
– High attention to detail
– Hands-on experience with blogging, copywriting, content marketing & PR
– A good hang of the nuances of English language and grammar rules
– Experience in social media marketing (planning and execution) is a big plus
– Ability to learn and adapt to the latest online marketing trends
– Experience working with a B2B/enterprise startup is a plus
– Excellent time-management, multi-tasking and interpersonal skills
Responsibilities include:
– Writing engaging content for the blog, website and emails
– Creating newsletters targeted towards a B2B audience
– Generating SEO-friendly content across sources and sharing them on social media channels
– Independently coming up with GREAT content from time to time
– Developing measurable content marketing strategies
– Growing a community of big data enthusiasts on social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter
– Understanding PromptCloud’s technology well as you progress
– Taking end-to-end ownership of tasks with moderate to minimal guidance
– Should have understanding of promotion of own articles on various platforms
– Should be familiar with keyword research and ROI on content in terms of visitors, likes, comments, leads etc
– Take ownership of on-page SEO and content promotion on various platforms including but not limited to blogs, forums and social media sites
– Have a basic understanding of Google webmaster and Analytics
– Assist in content strategy and keyword strategy to increase traffic for the website
– In-depth knowledge of and enthusiasm for social media along with demonstrated awareness of social media trends/developments
– Ability to work in a fast-moving and team-oriented environment
This is an independent role with minimal guidance / interference so give us a shout only if you can ideate as well as execute end to end.
What you will receive:
– Truckloads of learning
– Friendly environment and a culture for growth
– Collaboratively solving exciting challenges with smart minds around
– Busy days and busier nights that you won’t regret
– All things good or great at any bootstrapped company
(This position is currently inactive, you can still apply if you’re interested.)
Intern – Sales
Job Location
Bengaluru, India
Job Description
Interns in this program will work with PromptCloud’s/JobsPikr’s Sales Team at the company’s headquarters in Bengaluru, India for a duration of 2-3 months. The positions’ duties include but are not limited to prospecting, qualifying, conducting introductory calls, educating leads on the features & uses of our services/offerings, and closing deals.
Desired Qualifications
-Currently enrolled in a Business program with a Marketing or Sales focus, preferably with a Tech background.
-Excellent listening skills along with strong communication and organizational skills
-Ability to be detail oriented and realize the importance of accurate documentation and tracking
-Able to think critically, multi-task, and keep up in a fast-paced environment-Should be good with browsing through data to find the right prospects.
Job Description
-Responsible for generating new opportunities: key business function is prospecting new accounts for a newly launched product (https://www.jobspikr.com) and to manage and execute research activities as required to compile successful campaign target lists.
-He/she will assist in expanding the company’s database of prospects.
-He/she will be responsible for retargeting of outbound leads and launching various client-nurturing campaigns and account management.
-He/she will be responsible for arranging various outbound campaigns for increasing brand awareness and revenue.-Responsible for responding to RFPs and other queries from leads.
What you’ll Get!
-Challenging sales experience of breaking into a nascent market and gaining traction for a new product (using PromptCloud’s existing brand name)
-Opportunity to intern with & learn from the global leader in web data extraction
–Flexible work schedule
-Most importantly: First-hand sales experience!
-Potential full-time offer
So, are you ready help organizations across the world realize the potential of Web Crawling Services?
Note: Though all training and support shall be provided, the candidate is expected to work as an individual contributor.
Freelance Sales Agent- Multiple Geos (Commission based)
Job Location
Remote
Job Description
-Person in this role will be working remotely and independently as a sales agent responsible for generating new opportunities: key business function is prospecting new accounts and generating qualified leads for PromptCloud’s primary solutions
-Responsible for segmenting and identifying qualified leads via various communication channels through in-depth understanding of their use case
-Responsible for responding to RFPs and other queries from outbound leads and filling the middle of the sales funnel
Desired Skills and Experience
-Understand PromptCloud’s technology well enough
-Should have a good network and command over the market in one/multiple regions- especially North America, UK, EU and Middle East
–Experience of software sales/ business development in multiple verticals
-Excellent written skills and ability to communicate well with clients from various geographies
-Ability to understand customer’s industry and core business processes, and then identify the problems they are facing
-Ability to understand and describe how solutions and features can address the business issues that customers are facing
-Target focused individual contributor
How to apply
Send a mail to info+freelancer@promptcloud.com .
Note: This is an independent role with minimal guidance / interference so give us a shout only if you can ideate as well as execute end to end. All necessary knowledge base and training will be provided. Compensation will be made on a commission basis for every closed deal.