Indian Women Beat Men In Online Hotel Bookings, Market to Breach Rs 11k Cr & 80L Users By 2016
There is a reason Sachin Tendulkar opted to invest in a travel related ecommerce venture, compared to all other businesses in the world: It’s the biggest online business in India!
And the fact has yet again been proved as Google India shared some interesting data related with the online travel industry, especially hotel bookings.
As per Google’s latest research into this domain, it has been revealed that more than 84 lakh Indians will book their hotels using Internet, and collectively, $1.8 billion or Rs 11,000 crore worth of online hotel bookings would be done by 2016.
This is more than double the existing market…
Vikas Agnihotri, industry director at Google India said, “Consumer confidence to do online hotel bookings is on the rise in India, with an estimated 8.4 million Indians likely to book hotels online by 2016… the online hotel booking Industry will be worth USD 1.8 billion from the current USD 0.8 billion”
The study into online hotel industry in India was conducted by Google in association with TNS. For the research, Google analyzed their search trends between 2011 and 2014, and asked around 3716 travelers who had booked a hotel online between this periods (offline interviews). Targeting an age group of 18-54, they chose netizens from 12 major Indian cities, which includes New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Chennai.
Here are some interesting facts derived from the report:
– 3.5 million Indian Internet users (35 lakh) booked a hotel online in 2014, which will increase to 8.4 million (84 lakhs) by the time 2016 ends
– The current market of online hotel bookings is $800 million (Rs 4800 crore), which will swell to $1.8 billion (Rs 11,000 crore) by 2016 end
– 83% of those surveyed admitted that they always research online for hotel booking; but have booked a hotel online atleast once in the last 3 years
– 56% of those users who have booked a hotel have installed a mobile app for the same
– The most interesting revelation: 67% of all users wanted to pay at the Hotel, rather than paying online
– Google search data revealed that searches related with hotel booking has increased 30 times during the last 3 years
– 27% of all those who booked a hotel online used mobile website and/or app for booking confirmation
– Another interesting fact: compared to men, women are more comfortable in hotel bookings online! 79% of all online hotel bookings were done by women, compared with 21% by men
– Lack of trust and recommendation from trusted sources were the major hindrance in online bookings of hotel (as a person experience, out of 5, 3 times the images showcased in the website differs from reality; hence, I can understand this issue)
Globally travel industry is growing at a break neck speed right now as 660 million people visited travel related websites in 2014 and this is growing at a rate of 8.7% annually. Although the growth of ecommerce in India is more (15.3%), compared to travel (3.5%), the market is bigger. Travel is rated among the top 5 ecommerce niches in India and last year it captured massive 61% of the market share as Rs 49,730 crore worth of transactions related with travel happened online, which includes hotel bookings, ticket bookings, package tours and more.
Comparably, ecommerce had a market share of 29% as Rs 23,642 crore worth of transactions happened in this niche last year. No wonder that 60% of all transactions online happen on travel related domains.
