Articles tagged “makemytrip”

Booking.com, Airbnb, Marriott, and every high-end retail shop on the Champs-Élysées want to see the proliferation of Alipay and other digital payment services to capture the spending of Chinese travelers. But Alipay's key cross-border payments strategy, despite a record-setting IPO, has run into major snags.

Homestays and guest houses are still a small market in India, but it's mainly a problem of supply and not demand now. Investing in the country's alternative accommodations is a long-term bet, but the potential is large.

As a public company, Airbnb would be a dream for reporters, analysts, and investors because of the required disclosures about financials and strategy. It could also prompt competitors to up their game, and perhaps be more forthcoming about the numbers behind their own short-term rental businesses.

Executives are fine-tuning their strategy by pushing more into business travel management, tours-and-activities sales, and international bus booking.

One wonders whether some travel companies like MakeMyTrip Group must rethink parts of their business during the pandemic. They may continue to struggle to pay out millions in refunds to customers due to a staccato pace of travel restrictions.

Longtime leader and co-founder Deep Kalra will remain critical at the company in a newly created role of executive chairman. The change in job titles is a reward for co-founder Rajesh Magow's years of work leading the India business. Both executives have pushed hard on a subscription model, one of Skift's Megatrends for 2020.

Asia leads the global hotel pipeline and many more luxury hotels and wellness resorts will be opening in its fragile environments. Low-impact advocates are trying to lead by example, but they're too small and too few to effect a sea change.

MakeMyTrip definitely faces some near-term challenges, but it doesn't consider a recently announced regulatory probe in India to be one of them.

The love-hate relationship between chains and owners is boiling over in Asia-Pacific where the trade war and Hong Kong protests are impacting owners in many destinations. Chains can be less hated by showing more meaningful support to struggling owners rather than just paying lip service.

India’s largest online travel agency may beat analysts’ expectations and break even sooner rather than later. Ctrip, which now owns nearly half of the company, could be a factor. Another is boosting hotel content, which offers higher margins than air.