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Fintech & E-commerce
June 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 17
services will be made available to all under the brand ‘Tinkoff Travel.’
Tinkoff Travel has partnered with several global distribution systems (GDSs) to bypass middlemen and sell air tickets directly to customers. Major aggregators such as Aviasales.ru now feature the offers. “More will follow,” says the bank.
Answering a question on Tinkoff Travel’s competitive advantages, the bank’s press service told us: “Tinkoff Travel is unique because, in addition to attractive prices, it offers an up to 5% cashback for all purchases within the Tinkoff ecosystem, and up to 10% on hotel bookings and car rentals.”
Aiming at high customer service standards another focus is the customer service: “The standards of Tinkoff Travel’s technical support have been set at the same superior level as those of the bank. These have been fine-tuned based on an experience, which has involved 8.5mn customers.” Under plans, the service will integrate the in-house voice assistant ‘Oleg,’, which is already available in the Tinkoff mobile app. Oleg will assist users in choosing and booking the best tickets and tourist packages.
Russian online retailer Ulmart will open to Chinese producers
Russian online retailer Ulmart will start testing sales of Chinese products, the company said
on May 27. The platform will not be mediating the sales to end consumers, but will provide the "shopping window" for Chinese producers, as well as its orders processing engine.
Tinkoff claims to be the first Russian bank to launch an online travel agency with such public access. However, Tinkoff Travel operates on a very competitive market. Among Russia’s main OTAs are Biletix, Tutu, Kupibilet, OneTwoTrip and Ozon. Travel.
“We plan to capture 10% of the online market for air tickets,” Tinkoff Bank told EWDN.
OTAs are expected to generate more than RUB1 trillion ($15bn) in sales this year in Russia. In 2017, air tickets accounted for 49% of total online sales of travel and touristic services, according to Data Insight.
Currently Ulmart is focusing on household appliances and electronics and has already opened a new sub-segment "Smartphones from China". The share of Chinese products is planned to be lowered to 5% of total turnover, while their price would be 15% lower on average.