The Hindu Business Line : Travel portals had reasons to smile over festive season

Bangalore, Jan. 9 The festive season in December 2008, the week from Christmas to New Year,, has given a much-needed break to recession-hit travel portals.

According to Mr Ashwin Damera, Founder and CEO, Travelguru, the portal witnessed a 15 per cent increase in last-minute bookings to Goa. The softening of air fares also proved to be a bonanza at the right time.

Ms Neelu Singh, COO, Ezeego1.com, says the Christmas-New Year weekends were very good “as people did travel for a holiday. We have seen a 25 per cent rise in our bookings during this period”. According to her, bookings for the entire month (December) had been steady. Popular routes during this period, she says, were Mumbai-Kochi, Mumbai-Goa, Delhi-Goa, Mumbai-Jaipur, Bangalore-Kochi and Mumbai-Kolkata.

“We did record business for our hotels — our bookings increased by over 100 per cent from last year’s numbers,” says Mr Deep Kalra, CEO and Founder, MakeMyTrip. On December 31, the portal also received an “unprecedented” 1.5 lakh hits on its Web site.

Non-air biz

Though 2008 started on a high note for this portal with its investments in offline touch-points in key markets across India beginning to give returns, “the slowdown in the second quarter of 2008, coupled with the rising airfares, impacted us somewhat, but we made up the numbers through gains in the non-air category,” says Mr Kalra.

For this portal, the share of the hotels and packages revenue mix is much healthier. “With our non-air business picking up significantly — last quarter, the product mix for us has been 66 per cent air and 34 per cent non-air — we are on track towards our targets. We are currently on target to touch $400 million in financial year 2009 sales,” he adds.

Following the economic downturn and airfare increase, industry sources say that there was a 20-30 per cent drop in business in the industry

Outbound travel

It has been a good year for Travelocity India, says Mr Himanshu Singh, its Managing Director. “We have not noticed any significant drop in sales or site visits. September was our record month since our launch in December 2007 and we continued to see double-digit growth right until the end of 2008.”

The reasons, according to him, could be that suppliers work more closely with online travel agents (OTAs) “as they see value in their speed to market and cost-effective distribution; and also customers look for the best value for money that OTAs are able to offer,” he says.

Domestic tourism is a key thrust area, as well as packages to South-East Asia and Europe, Mr Kalra says. “The big growth, however, will occur in the outbound travel segment — more Indians now prefer to travel overseas and with domestic airfares rationalised after the zero-rupee ticket days, we expect domestic travellers to convert into international holidayers,” he adds. With the recent fare cuts announced by airlines, the zing might just be back in the new year!

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