TravTalk India Online Magazine
OTAs are not only following their website traffic statistics and analytics to draw up projections but are also seizing opportunities that come their way. TRAVTALK talks to three such aggregators.
Balu Ramachandran, Global Head, (Air Business), Cleartrip
We are observing that most travel right now is for emergency purposes or for returning to home destinations. This is because 90% of bookings are for one-way travel and more than 80% of travel is within two weeks of bookings. We expect travel to revive in four phases moving from emergency travel to intra-state, to travel in bubbles between regions that are less impacted, and finally to opening up of leisure and corporate travel for domestic and international. The pace of recovery will be contingent on the evolution of the pandemic.
Muzzammil Ahussain, EVP – Consumer Travel Unit, Seera Group
Corporate and government travel is still very low. Charters in itself is not our core business yet but we are looking at how we can build it as one of our services. The challenge with this is really the approval process. The demand for charters is just not for repatriation but also for leisure or business to destinations that don’t have direct flights. If it gains interest, it may become part of our business, but it won’t be purely online. We will have some kind of offline, high-touch element to it so that it becomes a bespoke product.
Vipul Prakash, COO, MakeMyTrip and Goibibo
Travellers from metros are searching for destinations for road trips to Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Goa. Young professionals working from home are willing to shift their workstations to either the hills or the sea-side. Many are opting for ground transport. Also, with business travellers, particularly entrepreneurs and field agents from MSMEs and SMEs returning to work-related trips, we are witnessing early yet strong recovery for our cabs segment between metro to non-metro and non-metro to non-metro routes.
Inputs by Hazel Jain
