Flipkart-owned Cleartrip said it witnessed a surge during the recently concluded Big Billion Days sale in the festive season.
Air travel bookings spiked by 90 per cent during Flipkart’s annual flagship sale compared with the business-as-usual period, said Cleartrip chief executive officer Ayyappan Rajagopal.
While hotel bookings saw the biggest jump by nearly three times, bus bookings grew 80 per cent, he added. “Almost every airline partner, around 3,700 buses partners, over 11,000 hotel partners participated in this and it’s been massive success for us,” he said.
Free cancellation
In this festive sale, the airlines that Cleartrip partnered with, offered free seat upgradtion and meal, while in case of hotels, cancellation was available until the time of check-in. “We have comfortably exceeded all the targets and all the benchmarks that we had set in terms of being able to deliver the kind of spike that we wanted to deliver with this event,” he added.
From the entry level price point view, the travel agency saw success at ₹999 for airline price tickets, while for hotels it was around ₹999 to ₹2,999. “On an average, per passenger price is around ₹6,000, but in a single booking we see around ₹11,000 to ₹12,000 in case of domestic and in case of international this goes up to ₹17,000-18,000,” Rajagopal added.
Cleartrip’s Rajagopal noted that for airline, the average cost was around ₹11,000 for domestic and around ₹70,000 to ₹80,000 for international flights.
In this sale event, a trend that emerged was people booking tickets 15 to 20 days in advance, he noted.