Travel portals lure customers to go the mobile way

A number of websites now offer special discounts on tickets, hotel bookings done from the mobiles

Online travel portal cleartrip.com recently offered a cashback of Rs 2,250 each for every flight ticket booked through a mobile phone. Special “mobile” discounts are available for hotel bookings on MakeMyTrip portal. Even yatra.com is offering extra discounts on its mobile platform for air tickets.

According to industry data, about 15 per cent of all online transactions and 35 per cent of all searches of travel portals are done through mobile phones.

The small screen has become the new battleground for these travel sites. “The customer retention on mobile is 1.5 times that of desktop. Having said that, we created a mobile platform because there was a demand for it, not the other way round,” said Subramanya Sharma, chief marketing officer, Cleartrip. For Cleartrip, within a year, the share of mobile transactions has gone up from two per cent to 15 per cent of the total purchases.

According to a recent KPMG report, the number of people surfing the internet using mobiles in India is set to touch 164.8 million by 2015. India is the world’s second largest mobile market after China, the report says. Promotions on mobiles are also done to get the mass user base acclimatised to a new purchase behavior, say industry experts.

“On a desktop, it is far easier to look at three websites. But an app user is a loyalist; so there is a push to make a shift to mobile. For a large number of people, the first internet experience is also via mobile,” said Sharat Dhall, president, yatra.com.

Companies are investing on building technologies for Android, iOS, BlackBerry or Windows phones, and for those without a data connection, bookings through SMS are also available.

“We continue to roll out new services built with a mobile-first approach. Industry is keen to get more customers using and booking through the mobile offerings with tactical discounts,” said Amit Somani, chief product officer, MakeMyTrip.

Cleartrip, which was the first one to start bookings on the mobile on June 28, 2010, launched its app Expressway – one touch payment on the mobile first and later brought it to the desktop. “User experience can make or break in getting a transaction on mobile, in contrast to desktop user experience,” Sharma added.

Currently, most of the bookings being made on the mobile platform are last-minute purchases. As people become more comfortable with the medium, travel companies are expecting the share of mobile bookings to grow significantly in the next two-three years. Many OTAs have started leveraging the Tablet market also, with specific designs and search products now available for booking hotels and flights.