Redbus today announced partnership with Expedia, that will enable users to book Bus ticket on Expedia site. With this partnership, Expedia gets access to bus seat inventory across more than 180,000 bus services which are operated by 900 operators across the country.
Redbus recently announced that it had reached a milestone of 1 crore bus ticket bookings. In an interview, Redbus.in founder Phanindra Sama also mentioned that Redbus will only concentrate on growing vertically in Bus Ticket booking space a will not venture out into Flight / Train booking services like other OTA’s.
This strategic partnership will help Expedia tremendously, as their existing customers will have options to book bus tickets apart from the flight and hotel bookings which they already feature on the site.
Bus travel is becoming quite viable, especially for smaller routes like Mumbai-Pune, Chennai-Bangalore because not only is it cheap but the travel time taken by bus is nearly equivalent to how much it takes to travel by Air. Bus travel is also comfortable on shorter routes with luxury buses such as “Volvo” and “Mercedes” provide unmatched executive class comfort to bus travelers.
I am guessing that other OTA’s like Cleartrip or Makemytrip will soon follow suite.
What do you think?
Good strategy by both Redbus and expedia .now expedia users can have more choice for booking their tickets easily.