TravTalk India Online Magazine
With a mission to make travel simple and flexible for its customers, Cleartrip has managed to rapidly pivot its product experience to meet changing needs of travellers, and has launched TravelSafe and Flexifly to address these needs. While the former offers a simple, comprehensive booking process, the latter insures customers against unforeseen contingencies.
Manas Dwivedi
Ever since the pandemic began, travellers have placed emphasis on safety and flexibility in their travel plans, and these needs are on a par with pricing. To meet this demand, Cleartrip has launched products and services such as TravelSafe and Flexifly. Sharing more details is Aditya Agarwal, Head of Corporate Strategy, Cleartrip, who says, “TravelSafe is a curated offering from Cleartrip where customers can get all safety-related information in one place by simply entering their source and destination airports. Information provided includes quarantine protocols, safety guidelines to be adhered to during travel, and details of cancellations and amendments. Additionally, we have videos and other content from regulators, airports and airlines aggregated in a snackable format that makes it easy for customers to comprehend all information quickly and helps give them more confidence in their travel plans. The offering has received warm reception from our customers and we will continue to upgrade this with relevant content. Our Flexifly product insures customers against unforeseen contingencies, and this had strong traction even before the lockdown. We continue to see even greater adoption of this since May 2020, and are in the process of enhancing features to provide even more value to our customers.”
Talking of the shift in travel trends and consumer behaviour, Agarwal shares data in terms of bookings and queries received by his company. “We have seen customers place a greater emphasis on safety and flexibility, and we expect this to persist. Post lockdown, we initially saw a high degree of emergency travel as was demonstrated by more than 95 per cent of the trips being one way. Over time, the share of one-way trips has come down to around 75-80 per cent, indicating some amount of confidence coming back to travel. Easing of quarantine restrictions has also helped reduce anxiety in customers. We expect this trend to persist with increasing customer confidence in travel. In terms of major routes, in the initial months, the top routes were dominated by sectors from major business centres like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru to destinations in the east and north such as Patna, Varanasi and Kolkata. However, in the last few weeks, we have seen this trend reversing with sectors from source destinations in east and north to major business centres dominating the top routes,” he says.
On working with the B2B community, Agarwal says that despite being predominantly a B2C-focused OTA, Cleartrip offers near-similar consumer experience to the B2B business as well. “We also have a substantial corporate business with a loyal customer base. Last year we had launched ‘Cleartrip for Work’, which also saw strong traction. We will continue to engage this base with innovations,” he explains.
