Indian online travel market booming, hotels come into focus

Netizens in small towns are as savvy as their urban cousins in using the web for purchasing goods and services, with 74 per cent of all online transactions traced back to non-metros. Far from the popular perception that only people from big cities use the Internet to plan their travel, including book tickets, it has come to light that web users hailing from small cities like Surat and Bhubaneswar are second to none in using the net for e-commerce, travel portal makemytrip.Com's founder and CEO Deep Kalra said at the Travel Distribution Summit 2006.

Given the high credit card usage in India, where industry estimates suggest 70 per cent of all online purchases are made with plastic money, the web marketplace is emerging as a convenient and cheaper alternative for shopping -- be it clothes or airline tickets. Kalra said there were around 30 million credit card users and 40 million Internet users in the country. However, the future of this market heavily depends on Online Travel Agents diversifying their service basket like offering hotel bookings in addition to e-ticket sales.

Making travel arrangements online is becoming a habit with the emerging middle class, who would grow to become 400 million-strong by 2009, and would generate an income of around 420 billion dollars, travel portal Yatra's co-founder Dhruv Shringi said, adding travelling for business is still the most frequent bookings online as leisure travel is still a fairly small but fast growing segment.

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