| Tourism is one of the Indian economy's top earners, | | | | agent and hoping it'll all turn out well or having a long |
| with prospects continuing to look brighter with each | | | | drawn telephonic conversation with a sales |
| passing year. India has the world's fastest-growing | | | | representative from a travel company, they opt to help |
| tourist economy, with the industry growing at an | | | | themselves and cut out the clutter. |
| explosive 13% annually over the past four years. The | | | | Imagine the plight of the person seeking to book a |
| travel industry at large - outbound, inbound and | | | | vanilla Mumbai-Delhi flight and go over what seems to |
| domestic alike, have been flourishing, thanks to the | | | | be an unending list of options with a travel agent - |
| conjoined efforts of State and Central government | | | | trying to make a mental note or scribble away choice |
| tourism bodies, airlines, hotels and other verticals with | | | | of airline, time of flight, price variation, routes, etc - draw |
| travel agents and tour operators. | | | | comparisons, figure out different permutations and |
| Alongside the tourism boom, India's Internet population is | | | | combinations and when he's finally decided, the |
| also growing rapidly. The Internet and Mobile | | | | availability of the flight he zeroed in on in all probability is |
| Association of India announced that one out of every | | | | gone! Compare this to the convenience of logging on |
| 10 urban Indians now have access to the Internet, with | | | | to Cleartrip, deriving all the information on one page |
| the user base having doubled since 2004. India clocked | | | | and make a booking in record time. Search, book, go! |
| 50 million Internet users this March. The online travel | | | | Cleatrip has capitalized on technology to make the |
| industry itself is growing just as quickly and is expected | | | | process of finding the right air ticket or hotel room in an |
| to reach the $2 billion mark by the end of 2007, and | | | | easy to understand and use format. With the advent |
| the recent mushrooming of travel portals is a | | | | of new and low cost air carriers and the forecasted |
| confirmation of the phenomenon. This radical trend has | | | | increase in hotel capacity, customers need an intuitive |
| sparked off the online versus offline debate - as to | | | | way to navigate the many choices available to them. |
| which of these present the better and smarter way to | | | | Nothing exemplifies this more than the unique user |
| do it. | | | | experience, which allows customers to mix and match |
| With time being a rare commodity these days, plastic | | | | flights on the same page, destination content on the |
| money at their disposal, and the world at their | | | | website's blog, mobile search for airfares, the airfare |
| fingertips, consumers know what they want and more | | | | search by month, and the most recent Flexi Dates |
| importantly how to go about it, smartly. They want | | | | Flight Search on cleartrip.com- where a lot of the |
| quick answers and the fact of the matter is that it | | | | innovations in creating new value added services |
| doesn't happen faster than the Internet. Based on the | | | | come from studying customer searching/booking |
| strength of this burgeoning trend Cleartrip, one of India's | | | | patterns and also by apprehending customer |
| leading travel portals and within barely a year of | | | | feedback. Recognition of the fact that customers use |
| launch, has effectively leveraged its legacy of | | | | both broadband and dial-up, Cleartrip has created a |
| expertise in travel and technology to design and | | | | user interface that allows customers to access their |
| deploy a simple solution that delivers travel products as | | | | search results in the fastest time possible to make |
| per customer's travel needs. | | | | travel simple for customers and service providers alike. |
| While the common belief is that consumer's book | | | | From sole dependence on travel agents for every |
| online to save costs - though this is partially correct, is | | | | aspect of their trip, to planning their trip based on online |
| not always the case. The most important contributing | | | | resources, to booking their travel online, consumers |
| factor from a consumer's standpoint in this regard is | | | | have come a long way, and the added benefit of |
| that of personal power. Booking their travel online gives | | | | convenience, time management and lower costs have |
| consumers a greater sense of control and a lack of | | | | become the deciding factors that online travel booking |
| dependence. Instead of placing their trust in a travel | | | | is here to stay. |