Travel whizzes on online highways

Mumbai: Travel wizards don’t come in long, flowing capes anymore. They come at the click of travel sites like Makemytrip, Yatra, Cleartrip, TravelGuru, HiBye, and Travelocity. We’ve seen their ads flying across our TV screen.
However, we don’t realise the juicy lucre these journeys promise: The online travel market is a cool $460mn and is slated to grow to a $2bn market by 2008, says Sachin Bhatia, marketing chief at Makemytrip.com.
Little wonder that VC funds from Norwest Ventures to Kleiner Perkins are eagerly backing travel sites.
A goldmine called e-commerce will help these sites fly high. Says Ashwin Damera, founder and owner of TravelGuru: Online travel is rapidly gaining popularity in India and by 2010 will be a force to reckon with.
E-ticketing and e-travel in India took off as a result of the efforts by Indian Railways in late 2004, and good deals offered by new-generation budget airlines which sell most of their stock through the Internet.
An estimated 7,000 tickets with an average price of Rs 1,500 each are sold each day on the Indian Railways website.
13/04/07 Anushree Madan Mohan/Daily News & Analysis

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Categories: General Aviation Apr 2007