Online Bus Ticketing Business in India
Happy x-mas
Online travel agent (OTA) Travelocity has introduced domestic and international flight booking for its India portal, covering 80 Indian cities, reports Internet Travel News. Been a while coming, albeit not surprising. So far, Travelocity has been focusing on hotel bookings. Travelocity India MD Himanshu Singh mentioned plans to launch ticketing last month, in an interview with eyefortravel.com. Singh mentioned in that interview, that cash-back offers of as high as 50 percent is putting pressure on existing travel players - there’s high competition in the OTA space.
Online travel agent (OTA) Travelocity has introduced domestic and international flight booking for its India portal, covering 80 Indian cities, reports Internet Travel News. Been a while coming, albeit not surprising. So far, Travelocity has been focusing on hotel bookings. Travelocity India MD Himanshu Singh mentioned plans to launch ticketing last month, in an interview with eyefortravel.com. Singh mentioned in that interview, that cash-back offers of as high as 50 percent is putting pressure on existing travel players - there’s high competition in the OTA space.
Travelocity India also has plans to offer real-time bookings for 77,000 hotels, globally. He mentioned that in India, growth in hote bookings in exected to be dramatic, “from 35% (2005) distribution via OTAs today, to 57% by 2010.” More in the interview here Eyefortravel also has an interview with Expedia India head Sharat Dhall
The online bus ticketing business in India is still in its infancy, but here’s some reason for the likes of Seedfund funded Redbus (tie-ups with 250 bus operators)and Footprint Ventures funded Ticketvala (tie-ups with 50 bus operators) to rejoice: MakeMyTripCMO Sachin Bhatia has told ET that the OTA major is planning to introduce bus ticketing, and is in talks with some of the ‘budding online bus-ticketing portals’. Competitor Yatra.com already has bus ticketing. More at ET. There appear to be a whole bunch of online bus ticketing sites, apart from those mentioned earlier: Abhibus.com Indiabusticket.com and Checkouttrip.com Obviously still much smaller than the airline ticketing space, but just as crowded.
