By IANS,
New Delhi : Nearly 80 percent of Indians in metros prefer to use online travel portals to plan their holidays, a new study released Friday says.
The study done by research company The Nielsen found that 34 percent of Indians book airline tickets, 17 percent book hotels and holiday packages while 14 percent book train tickets using these sites.
Travel portals like Yatra, MakeMyTrip and Travel Guru are the strongest players in the business, the study found.
“Given the growing penetration of the Internet in India, online travel agents are becoming increasingly popular among Indians. Consumers also find it quite convenient to book their tickets and plan holidays using these sites as it saves them time and efforts compared to other forms of bookings,” said Vatsala Pant, a director with the Nielsen Company.
The study further found that the majority of people who haven’t yet made any booking using online travel agents had checked these sites for information and were positively inclined to make bookings in the future.
“It is interesting to note that online travel sites are surfed by a majority of people even if they don’t end up booking from the site. Around 77 percent of Internet-connected people use these sites to search for airline information, 65 percent use the sites to search for train information, 59 percent for hotel and 57 percent for information on holidays,” said Pant.
“The online travel agents have garnered a significant share of the airline ticket booking, considerably higher than even the company website of the airlines. The main alternatives to online travel agents include traditional travel agents/tour operators, booking offices of hotels, and railway website for train booking,” said Pant.
The study included 842 people from four Metros – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and three mini-metros – Lucknow, Vadodara, Coimbatore.
Respondents were in the age group 20-55 years and included those who had traveled by air in the past 12 months and used the Internet to surf for travel related information.