Articles tagged “cleartrip”

Surprising factors have delayed the coronation of MakeMyTrip Group as India's queen of domestic online travel. Paytm came out of nowhere to grab share, Oyo upended budget hotel distribution, Ixigo tried to make price comparison chic, and Booking.com outmaneuvered Expedia for premium hotel bookings. From this scrappy mix, online travel will find new lessons.

Cleartrip is the second-place competitor against MakeMyTrip in India's online travel war. Its acquisition of Flyin signals a shift in its focus to the Middle Eastern market, where the price wars are less fierce.

Digital marketing and distribution to the highly fractured global hotel industry is a hot category that's attracting lots of funding and attention. Let's see what RezNext CEO Mike Kistner, formerly of Pegasus Solutions, now a competitor, can do with a nimble startup as opposed to a legacy hotel distribution company.

Concur still has only a minority stake in Cleartrip, but clearly Concur's $68.3 million total investment in Cleartrip shows that Concur considers Cleartrip and India as a strategic investment.

Cleartrip has improved its mobile game from site to app – a necessary move to keep up with the global trend of mobile reservations – but they’ll need to quickly add on more services to remain ahead of the trend.

Mobile may soon outpace desktops in India as the preferred way to book travel and Cleartrip clearly seems to be out front in its smartphone platform.