Everyone knows that the global online travel agencies (OTAs) like Expedia and Travelocity are the biggest names in online travel, but as far as the Indian Online travel market is considered it is clearly the local OTAs that are calling the shots. This was revealed in a report recently revealed by PhoCusWright which shows the dominance of India's homegrown OTAs, particularly among air and hotel shoppers.
PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Traffic Report, created in partnership with global digital intelligence provider comScore, tracks the growth of India's online travel population. More than 40% of Internet users visited the online travel category in Q4 of 2010, representing a 45% increase in unique visitors year over year. By comparison, the total Internet audience grew only 13% over the same period.
OTAs are playing a major role in driving online travel growth. Traffic to OTAs grew faster than that to both the airline and hotel supplier categories, increasing 65% from Q4 of 2009 – Q4 of 200. In Q4 2010, OTAs attracted more than double the unique monthly visitors as airlines, and nearly seven times more than hotel websites.
"In many major travel markets around the globe, OTAs and supplier websites wage fierce battles over online market share," said Douglas Quinby, senior director, research. "In India, however, local OTAs are beating out not only airlines and hotels in terms of traffic, but also their own global counterparts."
Led by New Delhi's MakeMyTrip, the top OTAs in India are all local players. Yatra and Cleartrip round out the top three, with the latter attracting over three times as many monthly unique visitors as the most popular global competitor, Travelocity India. But the global OTAs should not be counted out. Monthly unique visitors to Travelocity India grew more than 250% from Q4 2009 –Q4 of 2010, while traffic to Expedia India, the seventh most-trafficked OTA, more than doubled.
As more of India's population accesses the Internet via both computers and mobile devices, the share of Indians capable of shopping for and booking travel online will continue to grow.
Author: Anup Ravindran
Anup works as Project Lead in Teknokraaft and heads our OTA team.