Gen Z is fast emerging as the engine of India’s travel boom—whether it’s chasing leisure escapes or embarking on spiritual sojourns. Cleartrip says the cohort is driving robust growth across both segments, as the platform gears up for a bumper festive season on the back of rising demand.
They are the cohort that is driving this growth for the industry and for us as well, said Manjari Singhal, Chief Growth and Business Officer at Cleartrip. "One is the entire leisure travel which is driven by Gen Z and the other is the entire spiritual travel. These are the two segments where we are seeing a significant shift in demand. Countries like Japan, Vietnam and more are the geographies that are also helping us jump shift demand disproportionately," she added.
Travellers aged 18-25, categorised as Gen Z, are rewriting the travel rulebook, according to the travel platform's recent report which shows that 7 percent more GenZ are likely to choose solo trips compared to other age groups. This marks a sharp shift from traditional family-driven holidays where choices and budgets were shared. Today's younger travellers are heading to offbeat, experience-driven destinations—choosing adventure, nature, and quiet over sightseeing tours.
They are also using UPI 10 percent more often than other age groups, and over 10 percent prefer EMI-based travel payments.
In the last four months of 2025, Singhal is counting on GenZ and travel demand piquing during festivals.
Festive journeys
The travel industry will see an uptick in growth in the festive season due to the macroeconomic situation and the capacity (air) getting an update. "The summer was lifted, so we believe that the festive season will become even stronger this year for people to travel."
For Cleartrip, she expects a four times growth of what the industry is growing this festive season, up from three times so far this year.
"While there was a bit of disruption in the industry with the geopolitical situation and the Air India incident, we seem to have recovered well. While the industry is recovering, we are scaling much faster. Both air and hotels are at the helm of it, helping us drive growth for Cleartrip. We have improved the fundamental offering, the app experience, and how somebody interacts with us. Some of those changes are helping us to grow much faster. Also, growth is unlocking in the international air segment with new sectors opening up. In hotels, business is scaling as we are partnering with the top chains and independent hotels," Singhal said.
The platform has also launched a Visa Denial Cover which will give customers full refund in case of visa rejection.
Gaurav Patwari, VP (Vice-President) – air category at Cleartrip echoed the sentiments. There have been few ups and downs during the year but many of the government initiatives this year have uplifted the consumer sentiments including income tax rebate in the budget, followed by measures by RBI (Reserve Bank of India) in terms of interest rate.
Globally things don't look that good, but from India's perspective, the growth momentum is good, he said.
"January-March was an exceptional quarter in terms of demand. The industry hit an all-time high. It went up to the level of 6,30,000 daily flying passengers in the month of February," he said.
However, due to the political tensions followed by the sad incident of the Air India crash, the growth for the air travel was flattish, Patwari added "While the industry (air travel) has remained flattish this year, growing in single-digit, our growth has been high in terms of multiples of that growth."
More check-ins
On the hotels front, the Flipkart company is betting big on the festive season.
"We finished 2024 on a high during the BBD (Big Billion Day sale) and the festive season. Our room nights grew by 5 times to what we were doing before that. We have continued the same momentum. This year, we have recorded strong double-digit month-on-month growth," said Akhil Malik, Hotels Business Head at Cleartrip.
Last year during Flipkart's Big Billion Days sale, Cleartrip launched its year-end travel sale offering discounts on flights, hotels, buses, and holiday packages, including 5-star hotels from Rs 2,499, domestic flights from Rs 999, and international packages from Rs 9,999. It also gave additional discounts and benefits, such as up to 15 percent off for Flipkart and Myntra users, free cancellations for flights, and the redemption of Flipkart SuperCoins for further savings.
In August this year, Flipkart announced partnership with Marriott hotels, allowing customers to link their Marriott Bonvoy reward points and SuperCoins interchangeably.
Malik added that they have also focused on supply. "We have covered most of the domestic market in terms of supply. So, this year again, we are hopeful that we will continue the momentum even in the festive season and continue the triple-digit YoY (Year-on-Year) growth that we have been seeing going forward. We will see strong growth with regards to the overall accommodation sector."
AI activity
Cleartrip expects all engines to fire up from air to hotels with AI (Artificial Intelligence) boosting productivity. "We are seeing a 10 to 15 percent jump in productivity due to the use of AI," said Cleartrip's Chief Technology Officer, Manoj Awasthi.
"We are tapping into AI and started implementing it earlier this year to improve the productivity of our engineers using Cursor.ai and Copilot. Every engineer has access to Cursor.ai and Copilot as part of their day-to-day job to improve productivity. We have also leveraged it in our product. We launched Trippy in the context of packages. It is a conversational agent which allows customers to talk to the agent to get the information on various travel packages."
He also said that they are ready for the high traffic they see during festive season or during BBD sale. "We are a mobile-first platform so we also want to tap into the Tier II, III consumers who are part of Flipkart. We have a lot of scope there," he said.
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