Experiences to push travel in 2024

Flipkart owned Cleartrip has a lot of expectations from 2024 keeping in view the increasing demand for domestic and international bookings. Ayyappan Rajagopal, Chief Executive Officer, Cleartrip, says there are several new things that they are planning to do in terms of flexibility, value and affordability to meet the expections of customers.

Suhani Sood

Cleartrip saw an uptick in 2023 and is geared up with plans and strategies for the upcoming year.
Ayyappan Rajagopal, Chief Executive Officer, Cleartrip, said that he would like to summarize 2023 as a “learning year”, whereas in 2024, there will be a lot more pushing and demand for international air business, hospitality and itineraries providing experiences and packages.

“From our perspective also, there are a lot of new things that we are planning to do in terms of flexibility, value and affordability. In all these facets, we want to differentiate and disrupt the space,” he said.

Emphasizing on technology, Rajagopal said, “We can make travel a lot more seamless with the use of technology, and that is our aspiration for the next year. That is the way we will internally look at.”

He said that people in the age group of 18 to 25 years are travelling a lot more. “Some of our anecdotal data points clearly show that their (of youth) first international travel earlier used to be largely for the honeymoon. But now it is like people are not waiting for the marriage or honeymoon; they are going with their friends. Typically, Indians love to go to Thailand and Dubai. These used to be the two largest visited places. Now, Vietnam has been added to it. Bali and Sri Lanka are also growing really well. There are other destinations, not so regular sort of places that Indians ventured into,” he said.

Collaborations must to sustain

Rajagopal underlined the importance of tie-ups for sustenance in business. “Collaborations and networking are extremely important as per my personal experience. It is a huge learning curve in the travel space because for one person to do anything and everything is super tough. And hence collaboration and working with multiple players and multiple partners is the right way to go, because it’s a digital inventory and not a physical inventory. You can connect and work with multiple partners so that you get that information seamlessly, you get a better price, you get better offers, all of that as and when you have a larger partnership,” he said.

He said there are certain offers and discounts that are time bound and if you do not avail them within the specified period, they are likely to lapse. “In that case, I cannot sell the product since it is a perishable inventory,” he said. He cited an example of seat availability in flights to prove his point.

Planning in advance? Not anymore

People now want to book just ahead of travel. Now they don’t want to plan months in advance. “And we believe that is s going to continue. That started during COVID and continues because that is a new trend,” Rajagopal said.

Air business flying high

• Daily pax close to 4,647 lakh flyers a day, in spite of lesser number of aircraft.
• Even without the same number of aircraft, the numbers are more, which just signifies that the demand is pretty high.
• International air is still 70 to 75 per cent of where it used to be pre-COVID. It needs to come back completely towards 100 per cent demand.