Indian OTAs (Online travel agents) are in news again. With more than 75% of e-commerce spend happening purely on online travel booking, this space is getting quite lucrative.
With the number of Online Travel agents reaching double figures, it is quite competitive too. To move ahead of the competition, ClearTrip, Yatra and IXIGO have come up with new features to attract more audience.
IXIGO has introduced a new feature that will allow the users to search comparative rates among the major players – Yatra, Cleartrip and MakeMyTrip. The users have to simply click the three checkboxes while searching for the airfares on IXIGO itself. This is an excellent feature, at the same time quite risky. IXIGO seems to be quite confident about their search results being the lowest, otherwise this feature is sure to backfire.
This feature is quite appealing as the users do not have to go through different portals to carry out same search. Quite a time saver!
Cleartrip on the other hand has launched Cleartrip graphs that provide users with indicative prices across range of dates for 9 different airlines. This will help users to find the cheapest fare rates across different carriers.
This feature will surely be useful to users who are flexible on dates and ready to adjust their trips according to rate fluctuation.
On the other hand, Yatra has taken the brick and mortar franchisee route to spread its wings. Yatra has tied up with Sify Technologies to increase the penetration of its travel related services. As per the alliance, the Sify retail points would offer Yatra.Com’s travel services with an integrated cash acceptance model. Consumers can book all domestic airlines tickets with instant confirmations, hotels and resorts by paying cash over the Sify counters, the company said in a release.This will give them access to thousands of potential users in smaller cities and non-metros, who are still not comfortable with Internet transactions.