Comparison of online travel portals in India - few observations
Here are some of the observations I made during my research on the Indian online travel portal.
Obs 1) Several of the portals showed me deals which did not make any sense logistically. For example, while searching for flights from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, a couple of portals showed me a few itineraries with a stopover in Delhi and Hyderabad. Now, why would I opt for a stopover in Delhi or Hyderabad if I intend to go to Mumbai ?
Results from Yatra:
Results from ClearTrip:
Comparison of online travel portals in India
Earlier, I had compared the players in the Indian online DVD rental market. This time around, I decided to do a head-to-head comparison of the Indian online travel portals.
Why online travel portals ?
The Indian online travel market is H-O-T !! Over the last year, the Indian online travel portal market has seen a lot of action - New players have emerged, VC investments have been made, aggressive online marketing campaigns and now even several international players are considering entering into the market - an all out race to get the biggest market share. Oh, and did I mention that the Indian online travel segment is the fastest growing e-commerce sector ?
I have tried to be as accurate as possible based on my research from publicly available sources. However, if you find any discrepancy, please feel free to let me know and I shall correct it accordingly.
The comparison does not include Rediff FareSearch and IndiaTimes Travel for the following reasons:
1) It is difficult to estimate the traffic and market share for these two sites. Alexa doesnt display the traffic details for the travel sub portal for IndiaTimes. The only detail Alexa provides is that 2% of all visitors to IndiaTimes website visited their travel sub portal. Details for Rediff FareSearch dont even show up in the traffic details for Rediff.com.
2) Rediff FareSearch is more of a travel deal aggregator as opposed to a travel booking portal. What I mean is that they do not provide the ability to book flights on their site. Instead, they redirect you to the corresponding airline’s booking engine to complete the transaction.
So which sites are included in the head to head comparison ?
I have decided to include the five biggest players (Note:IndiaTimes travel may be bigger than some of these but I dont include them based on explanation above) in the online Indian travel segment based on their Alexa traffic details:
MakeMyTrip, Yatra, ClearTrip, TravelGuru, TravelMartIndia
Without further ado, here’s the comparison matrix. Some additional observations follow
Indian travel portals comparison
MakeMyTrip.com |
Yatra.com | ClearTrip.com | TravelGuru.com | TravelmartIndia.com | |
| Founded | April 2000 US2India ticketing 2005 - India domestic ticketing |
August 2006 | July 2006 | February 2006 | March 2000 |
| Market served (TIFI == Ticketing to International destinations From India) |
Domestic flights, hotels,vacation packages, TIFI Offer ticketing from US & Australia to India as well |
Domestic flights,hotels, recently started TIFI | Domestic flights, hotels | Domestic flights, hotels, TIFI, vacation packages | Domestic flights, hotels, TIFI, vacation packages |
| Sales Figures | $100 million by Feb 2007 Estimated $120 million by march 2007 [1 ] |
$30-35 million by Feb 2007 Estimated $120 million by 2007 end [2 ] |
No figures available. Aiming for 400000 transactions in first year [3 ] | none available | none available |
| VC Funding | $10m + $6m + $13m [4 ],[5 ],[6 ] |
$5m [7 ] |
$3m + $8m [8 ], [9 ] |
$10m + $15m [10 ] |
none available |
| Market Share (based on alexa traffic) |
50-55 % | 17-19% | 17-19% | 7-9% | 1-3% |
| User Interface while searching/booking tickets | Bad. Gaudy colors. My biggest gripe - till the last screen, it did not clearly show me the total cost (tax incl.) of the selected flights. | decent - looks very cluttered though. sorting of flights by price, departure time etc. Also displays the cheapest fare for the selected itinerary. Response time a bit slow though. | Simplest, cleanest and best user interface amongst all. Easily readable info about prices (incl. taxes) | good, intuitive interface for selecting the departing and returning flight. however, when i clicked book it, took forever to contact payment gateway - huge problem. | after 2-3 minutes of searching, it came back with an error that no flights were found. |
| Results from a sample booking from Ahmedabad to Mumbai (dep: April 9, return: April 23) | Rs/- 3548 | Rs/- 4000 | Rs/- 3555 | Rs/- 3324 | returned no flights in result |
| Sample itinerary booking above - airlines included in result | SpiceJet, Indian Airlines, Jet,Air India | Indian Airlines, Jet, Air India, Sahara, Kingfisher | Spicejet,Indian Airlines, Kingfisher | Spicejet, Indian Airlines, Air India, Jet, Kingfisher | returned no flights in result |
| Mobile features | recently announced mobile features in the works [11 ] | couldnt find any on their website | Recently introduced searching for fare listings by SMS | launched SMS flight booking in Karnataka. Couldnt find anything on their website though. [12 ] |
Search, book flights by SMS. Tied up with Paymate for booking through mobile |
| Miscellaneous differentiators | Market leader. shortlisted for Red Herring 100 Asia companies. | Book hotels from any Reliance World Outlet. Also, have introduced a sister site www.raahi.com as a travel destination guide. | Great, clean interface. Founding team collaborates through blog soliciting feedback and making appropriate changes. | offers cruise bookings too. | mobile booking features. first online travel portal in India. offers ‘conference planner’ service. |
Google News goes Hindi
See for yourself.
Digital Marketing Conference webcast
The IAMAI organized Digital Marketing Conference 2007 begins today. You can catch up on the webcast here.
Recipe for an Indian Digg - missing ingredients
While there’s a pleothra of Digg inspired, Meneame - Pligg based, social bookmarking sites for Indian news, why is that none have gained significant traction ? After all, 33% of the Indian Internet population was searching for information / reading news. These sites havent made headway into the early adopter Indian crowd as well.
Why ?
The answer - lack of execution.
Before you go judgemental on me, here’s why I say lack of execution.
1) Every time I visit ibnlive to catch up on the latest news, I keep wondering - why do they have the flares for Digg, Reddit, Newsvine and Fark on their news stories ?
Unless IBNLive posts a super controversial post, it is highly unlikely that any of the stories are going to get a lot of diggs/make it to the front page.
Read more
Indian Railways goes mobile, top search query on Google India
Cleartrip goes mobile, TravelmartIndia goes mobile and now Indian Railways decides to go a step forward.
Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has launched IRCTCmobile, a graphical interactive interface for booking train tickets, for mobile phone users. However, for using this application, mobile users need to have Java-enabled handsets (to view graphics) and should be able to access the Internet. The application is based on a patented technology of Mr Sam Pitroda’s US-based firm C-SAM.
IRCTC already offers the option of ticket booking through mobile phones using instant voice response and text messages, but they are not based on graphical user interfaces.
Once users install the new application, they can check availability of tickets, book tickets using credit and cash cards, check fare and train details between two stations, check ticket details and view route.
‘Indian Railways’ was also the top search query on Google India. Read more
MakeMyTrip ads on EnGadget
Not sure if they are aiming for targeted advertising or not — but they are definitely getting the elite eyeballs.
Google quells privacy concerns
Google finally has an answer to my privacy concerns. Google announced the purging or anonymising of web searches after a period of 18 to 24 months.
Small but a significant victory.
Gang of Girls launches GoG TV
Sunsilk Gang of Girls - the popular social networking site for Indian women has launched Gang of Girls TV, aka GoG TV.
Registered users can upload videos, view other member’s videos and rate videos. They also have ‘Gang of DreamGirls’ contest. Take a video of yourself / friends singing any of the tracks from the movie Dreamgirls. Upload the video and if your entry is amongst the top 20, you get a 1000 Rs/- voucher. Oo laa laa !!