'3/10 travellers booked air tickets using apps between July-Sept'

Cleartrip saw a 67% rise in mobile searches in July-September, compared with the previous quarter. Transactions grew by 168% on year-on-year basis.

Three out of 10 domestic travellers have booked their air tickets and hotel rooms using apps on their smartphones and tablets between July and September, data from travel portals showed, indicating a trend in buying habits.

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Cleartrip saw a 67% rise in mobile searches in July-September, compared with the previous quarter. Transactions grew by 168% on year-on-year basis.

“The mobile channel continues to pleasantly surprise us,” said Samyukth Sridharan, chief operating officer, Cleartrip.

“On an absolute basis, the mobile medium stands at 43% of overall traffic and 30% at a transaction level,” Sridharan said.

Another travel website, MakeMyTrip.com, witnessed similar feedback.

Mobile phones contributed more than one-third of monthly unique visitors and represented 24% of all online transactions, according to data shared by the travel portal.

More than 16% of the online transactions for domestic flights in the last quarter came from mobile users, who also contributed 34% of all online domestic hotel transactions in the same period, the data showed.

“With rise in smartphones in India, more and more people are turning to mobile phones to plan and book their trips. Bookings from the MakeMyTrip mobile app have skyrocketed in the past two quarters,” said Pravin Bhasin, head, mobile products, MakemyTrip.com.

Bhasin said the company’s app had recorded 40 lakh downloads recently.

While an increased use of smartphones for travel searches was expected in metros, Cleartrip data for the last quarter showed the trend is catching on in smaller cities as well.

In Mumbai, 45% of all time spent by users on the website was through the mobile app and in Delhi, it was 52%. The figures were higher among smaller cities: Lucknow (60%), Jaipur (59%) and Indore (45%).