The online travel industry in India is the biggest contributor to the B2C e-commerce industry with a market size of nearly Rs. 7000 crores in 07-08. Airticketing currently accounts for 80% of online travel transactions. The remaining is split largely between rail bookings at the IRCTC site and other services such as hotels and cars.
With the online air ticketing poised for growth, its no surprise that ClearTrip has got an additonal round of funding $18.5 million. However this rather large downpour of cash in a fairly crowded sector prompted me to do a quick comparison of the best known sites namely ClearTrip, MakeMyTrip and Yatra. I've compared the sites on very basic criteria listed below:
To review the results click on the image below:
Based on these observations I'm led to believe the following:
Finally, recently I made a day trip to Mumbai and the night before I was looking for a hotel. Tried all these three websites and got very similar results for my budget. I checked out the prices for "Hotel Metro International" on Kurla road. On these sites, a one bed executive was costing approx Rs. 3300 per night including breakfast and pickup drop from airport. However when I reached Mumbai airport I met Ram Bhai at the airport. This gentleman does on the spot hotel reservations for people. And guess what I got the same room at Metro International for Rs. 2500/- including airport pickup and breakfast...! Ram Bhai can be reached on +91 9820644538.
With the online air ticketing poised for growth, its no surprise that ClearTrip has got an additonal round of funding $18.5 million. However this rather large downpour of cash in a fairly crowded sector prompted me to do a quick comparison of the best known sites namely ClearTrip, MakeMyTrip and Yatra. I've compared the sites on very basic criteria listed below:
- User Interface design and response time
- Transactional services offered
- Informational services offered
- Mobile services offered
- Flight search and booking
- Hotel search and booking
To review the results click on the image below:
Based on these observations I'm led to believe the following:- ClearTrip has the cleanest & fastest UI. However data is a clear question for the site. I did not find the cheapest deal here and neither a hotel. Also, as they add more features such as support for Mobile, car and bus rental etc. it will be a challenge to keep the UI clean and fast.
- Yatra is the most comprehensive of the three in terms of features and services, but has the slowest and heaviest UI. The landing page has over 140 links..! When switched between Flights to Hotel, the entire page reloaded, however only the left handside control was changed...! The hotel search was much faster.
- MakeMyTrip is somewhere in between ClearTrip and Yatra in terms of the UI and response times. However it was the most comprehensive in terms of flight ticket data. I got the cheapest deal among the three from this site. However Hotels was another story. This is the kind customer experience that drives people away. I waited for more than a minute for the hotel search to give me a result. The page loaded in all its finery and entirety only to inform me that there were no hotels found.!
Finally, recently I made a day trip to Mumbai and the night before I was looking for a hotel. Tried all these three websites and got very similar results for my budget. I checked out the prices for "Hotel Metro International" on Kurla road. On these sites, a one bed executive was costing approx Rs. 3300 per night including breakfast and pickup drop from airport. However when I reached Mumbai airport I met Ram Bhai at the airport. This gentleman does on the spot hotel reservations for people. And guess what I got the same room at Metro International for Rs. 2500/- including airport pickup and breakfast...! Ram Bhai can be reached on +91 9820644538.
