India continues to foray more into digital travel booking

India continued to foray more into digital travel booking with a greater emphasis on mobile transactions in 2016, according to a survey by travel portal Yatra.

“With smartphone prices crashing and penetration increasing rapidly, the Indian consumers are rapidly using mobile devices as their primary means to book travel. We have seen close to 40% of our bookings and 67% of our traffic are coming via the mobile website and mobile applications,” the portal said in a release.

There was a rise in online bookings too. Moreover, hoteliers are using the online route to interact with customers during their travel journey. Online penetration of hotel bookings in India “is still in low double digits and we expect the trend of increasing online hotel bookings to continue in 2017,” Yatra said.

The use of plastic money has increased post demonetisation. The Yatra survey indicated the inclination of Indian travellers to use credit/ debit card over cash. 37.4% travellers choose plastic money over cash for making bookings and while travelling.

“The ban on old 500 and 1000 rupee notes further led to a significant 57.9% travellers booking through the desktop & smartphone and a drastic dip in booking through offline agents. We think this is a trend that we will see more of in 2017,” said the survey.

On the flipped, demonetization has had a downward impact on inbound travel. Solo travelling also gained popularity during the year. According to the Yatra survey, 11% travelers opted to be on their own in their planned holiday.

News Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com