MakeMyTrip: Preferred Online Travel agency in India

RELATED NEWS Cox & Kings: India’s No. 1 brand among Top 1000 brands Sprice.com joins with Indian Express Group Dip in tourism to shave 0.5% from GDP: Omkar Goswami First-of-its-kind Hotel-Search launched by MakeMyTrip Nifty BSE | NSE 25/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty?

MakeMyTrip, one of India's largest travel companies, has been ranked as the most-preferred full-service Online Travel Agency in India. In a survey conducted by TravelBiz Monitor, a weekly news magazine reporting on and for the Indian travel and tourism industry, the company ranks top-most among the full-service Online Travel Agencies preferred by the respondents.

The survey polled 300 respondents across six metropolitan cities and attempts to identify and forecast customer behavior in the highly fluid environment of online travel. 33.3% of them voted MakeMyTrip as their preferred Online Travel Agency over other portals in India. IRCTC led the survey with a 40% share but the portal provides only train tickets, and was, until recently the only portal to offer them.  

Commenting on the survey findings, Mr. Deep Kalra, CEO & Founder, MakeMyTrip said, "We are pleased with being credited as India's most preferred OTA in an independent survey. This only serves to re-affirm our belief and continue with our efforts to innovate within the business. The  endorsement we received by winning the Best OTA Award from Galileo-Express Travel World last year has now been complemented by a popular poll amongst customers.  Travellers have come to expect industry-leading innovations from MakeMyTrip - whether it is payment solutions, deals and discounts or technology innovations. We'd like to promise them that we'll continue to strive towards exceeding their expectations." 

Mr. Kalra further elaborated, "Online Travel is driven largely by air products since these are low-involvement products. This also makes the sticky-factor negligible for customers. It is extremely gratifying for us therefore to be able to create a significant differentiator through our best-deal offerings and superior customer service, leading customers to respond favourably." 

The survey threw up other interesting trends in the Online Travel space: 

1. Almost all respondents have booked an air ticket- bought by  99.6% of pollsters they are the most popular products booked online - railway tickets follow at 50.5% 

2. A promising growth area is the Hotels segment - 20% of the participants had already booked a hotel room online once 

3.  52% of the participants preferred booking online rather than through travel agents and almost 30% had booked travel products between 1-3 times a year. At a close second, 26% participants had done travel bookings between 4-6 times a year. 

4. In what is a clear indicator of where the future lies (and that it lies with people who are comfortable with technology), convergence has been identified as the leading enabler - almost 60% respondents believe that MCommerce will be preferred through OTAs in the future. 

Last December, MakeMyTrip was felicitated with the Galileo Express TravelWorld 'Best Online Travel Agency in India' Award making the Company the first-ever recipient of the award for the newly-introduced category. 

Travel & Tourism is a fast-growing sector and as one of the largest travel companies in India, MakeMyTrip is fueling this growth. Both inbound and outbound tourism from India registered a 15-20% growth in 2006-07 and is expected cross 20% this year too. Outbound tourist market has been growing at an annual average growth of around 25 per cent - Euromonitor International estimates the outgoing tourism expenditure from India to grow to US$ 21 million by 2011, representing a growth rate of over 25.7 per cent between 2006 and 2011.  

Sourced From: Vox Public Relations