Metros make most of airline flash sale
Unlike other years, the recent airline flash sale in India announced discounts only on advance purchase, and even then, the sale gave OTAs and travellers enough reason to cheer. An increase of over 300% in visitor traffic for OTAs saw unprecedented advanc
We saw maximum bookings of 22 per cent coming in from Delhi With the onset of summer vacations, we have seen higher traction from South India During the sale period, we saw visitor traffic grow by 300 per cent
Rajesh Magow, Co-founder & CEO-India, MakeMyTrip, said, “The visitor traffic to our website went up by four times on January 23, which was the busiest day of the sale period. Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore registered the maximum number of bookings, but some sectors became more popular during the sale due to the discounts being offered. For example, the Delhi-Bangalore route, which is not among the 5 top-selling sectors on normal days, was the second-most-booked sector during the sale period.” He added that, “Bookings on the BangaloreDelhi route grew by 800 per cent. We saw maximum bookings of 22 per cent coming in from Delhi, followed by 17 per cent bookings from Mumbai and 13 per cent from Bangalore. The second round of sale also witnessed an enthusiastic response. The visitor traffic to our website went up to 51 per cent, while air-ticket bookings increased by 50 per cent, compared to the last weekend of December 2013. This time, Mumbai led the ticket-bookings on MakeMyTrip with 18 per cent of total bookings during the sale-period.”
Yatra.com’s President Sharat Dhall said, “The discounted airfares launched by SpiceJet and Indigo have definitely brought good cheer to Indian travellers. With bookings having increased by almost 45 times over the past two days, Jet and Air India also joined the race to leverage advance bookings. With the onset of summer vacations, we have seen significantly higher traction from South India.”
Noel Swain, EVP – Suppler Relations, Cleartrip, said, “This time around, the discount was available only for bookings made 30 days in advance. The results were, however, interesting on two counts. Firstly, the growth in number of bookings was the highest ever in a sale period and secondly, customers did not postpone their travel to avail the 30-day advance purchase discount. In fact, we saw a marginal increase even for travel within the 30 day period where flights continued to be available at non-sale fares.
This shows that airlines managed to create a new market for themselves within the leisure segment of travellers, without diluting the yield closer to departure. During the sale period, Cleartrip saw visitor traffic grow by 300 per cent. Besides the major metro cities, Goa and Srinagar were the most popular leisure sectors during this period.