www.yatra.com SBI credit card offers

Yatra.com Presents a Special Offer for SBI Credit Cardholders

Get special discounts with your SBI Credit card & enjoy Great Savings.

The offer is available on all Hotel & Flight bookings for travel within India (across all sectors) – and on International Holiday bookings.

Avail this discount in 3 easy steps:
1. Select the Flight, Hotel or International holiday you wish to book.
2. On the Review page, quote the appropriate 8 digit promotion code in the Promo code field.
3. Your promotion code would be “SY” followed by the “first 6 digits of your SBI Credit Card No.”

You can now proceed to the payment page and complete the booking with your SBI Credit card only. The applicable discount will be applied to the final amount you pay.

Hurry! This is a limited period offer BOOK NOW !

Offer valid till March 30, 2010 for any travel date.

yatra.com promotion with Yahoo India

Yatra.com signs advertising deal with Yahoo India
05 January, 2010
Yatra.com and Yahoo India have signed an advertising deal under which Yahoo India will feature Yatra.com as the recommended travel website on its homepage. Yahoo India will also provide display advertising inventory to Yatra.com on its Homepage, Finance and News sections. Yatra.com will also be featured as the Knowledge Partner on Yahoo Answers for Travel category.

Bharat Malik, head, online marketing, Yatra.com, has said, “It is a long term partnership, whereby we will harness the strengths of Yahoo, the preferred destination of Indian internet users. It will enable us to increase the brand awareness of Yatra.com and have a positive impact on our advertising in other online mediums as well.”

Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO, Yatra.com, has said, “Partnering with a leading site like Yahoo India is a logical choice for Yatra.com. Through this association, we believe that Yatra.com will benefit from the strong reach of Yahoo in India.”

Arun Tadanki, managing director, Yahoo India, has said, “The Yahoo network reaches 72 per cent of all internet users in India and we are committed to strengthening our audience growth through product innovations and marketing investments. We are also very focused on providing our advertisers with comprehensive solutions to reach their target audience effectively. Our advertising partnership with Yatra.com leverages various properties of Yahoo India to provide strong visibility to this leading travel portal.”

yatra.com train

Yatra.com has announced the extension of their strategic relationship with IRCTC by renewal of its contract to offer train bookings on its travel portal. IRCTC, the fastest growing ecommerce website in Asia pacific has extended their agreement with Yatra.com because of its proven track record and number of bulk bookings that have happened in their alliance thus far.

In keeping with its innovative spirit, Yatra.com has also rolled out yet another exciting and unique scheme for their customers making their rail travel bookings on the website. Under this offer, a customer can avail a discount of Rs. 1000 on any domestic hotel of his or her choice just by booking his rail travel onYatra.com.

Speaking on the contract renewal and new offer, Dhruv Shringi, Co Founder and CEO, Yatra.com, said, “Travel by Indian Railways is the single largest and most economical mode of public transport in India, with over 1.2 million travelers booking and travelling through 7,000 passenger trains daily. With this number growing phenomenally every year, it was essential to meet the demands of our customers and continue providing them with the option to travel by trains. AtYatra .com we always aim for high customer satisfaction our constant efforts are towards introducing maximum unique offers which add more value to our products and services.”

The key highlight is Yatra’s best-in-class booking experience that uses most advanced technology and offers customers quick & easy navigation. Under this service, users can view all available trains, timings, fares and seat availability for 5 days on a single screen, in addition to being able to book and cancel online. Tatkal bookings and senior citizen quotas too are available for booking.

Along with easing the booking process for customers, Yatra.com through its retail arm, Yatra Holiday Lounges, develops ideas for customers who would like to personalize and customize their travel. These holiday lounges allow customers to book a holiday best suited to their needs in consultation with aYatra Travel Expert. Currently, Yatra .com, has eleven premium Lounges spanning across the country, located in Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon (Delhi NCR), Noida (Delhi NCR), Chennai, Chandigarh, , Ludhiana, & Pune.

yatra.com international

Get More when you Book an International Air Ticket from yatra.com international

Best Price Month for International airfares.
Yatra.com offers the lowest fares to any international destination. Book your ticket this week and get an even better bargain. Get the lowest fare to any destination, anywhere, for any travel date and on any airline. Hurry! It’s a limited period offer.

Fair Deal Promise
Book an International ticket with Yatra and if you get a better price anywhere else, we will match the fare. Read the complete

Partial Payment Option
Pay only 25% to book an International Air ticket & pay the balance before you fly.

Flexible Date Search
You can enjoy saving on all International air fares by choosing to fly when the fares are lowest. With our Flexi-Date PriceFinder, find the lowest fare across multiple travel dates in just one click.

Yatra Exclusive : Get FREE Visa Assistance with every International Air Ticket.

Book any International Air ticket at Yatra and we shall provide you complete Visa assistance at no additional cost to you. No hidden charges.

Yatra.com best-fares

How does the Fair Deal Promise work?

• This offer is only applicable upon making a booking from Yatra.com for travel originating from India.
• This offer is only valid for published retail fares for exactly the same flight(s), airline, travel date(s), fare class and travel itinerary for the same number of passenger(s). Fares must be in exactly the same cabin(s)/class (First, Business, and Economy) and carry exactly the same fare rules and restrictions.
• If you find an International airfare that is available to the Indian general public from another travel agent or an online travel agent (and not from an airline directly), you can avail the “FAIR DEAL PROMOTION” upon converting your booking into a purchase of the same ticket from Yatra.com.
• At the time of booking an international air ticket from Yatra, if you find a lower basic fare elsewhere as mentioned above, you are required to obtain a valid quote clearly mentioning the fare, booking conditions, travel dates, number of passengers, airline and date of booking & travel clearly shown and call a Yatra travel consultant on 0124-3040666 or 1800 1800 810 immediately to share the quote before making a purchase (Email requests will not be accepted unless following a phone enquiry.
• Yatra.com will cross-check the fare quote of the Eticket for availability and booking conditions from the supplier (Agent). The confirmation of the ticket is subject to availability and validation from the supplier (Agent).
• If the basic airfare is available as shown on the valid quote and meets the applicable conditions of the FAIR DEAL PROMOTION, Yatra.com will do its best to match the fare..
• In case of change of itinerary, rescheduling, cancellation or refunds, the discount amount will be adjusted from the refund amount. FAIR DEAL PROMOTION will not be applicable on the bookings that will be rescheduled, cancelled or refunded.
• Yatra.com is the final authority on the interpretation of these rules. Yatra.com reserves the right to terminate this offer at any time without notice

The Fair Deal Promise Excludes:

• “FAIR DEAL PROMOTION” is not applicable on unpublished fares that are not available to the general public and fares that cannot be purchased on Yatra.com (airlines that we are not offering). Not applicable for fares quoted directly by the airlines.
• Fares not available to the general public include, but are not limited to special deals for corporates/companies, military, government, wholesaler, consolidator, opaque agencies and other discount fares.
• FAIR DEAL PROMOTION does not apply to package fares, such as airfares sold as part of a travel package, nor does it apply to airfares on another website that have been reduced as a result of promotional discounts, such as discount coupons, loyalty program discounts or fly free offers or if another travel agent, airline or an online travel agent is undercutting the system fares using any of their marketing promotion or from it marketing Budget.
• FAIR DEAL PROMOTION will not be applicable on tickets bought through Auctions or offered to closed subscriber or membership groups.
• Yatra reserve the rights to add, modify, alter, withdraw all or any of the terms and conditions or replace, wholly or in part, the program by any other program, whether similar to this program or not or to withdraw it altogether without any prior notice.
• This promotion is not applicable when you use discount coupons/ vouchers or other promotional offers on the alternate website

makemytrip.com domestic flights

The growth of broadband and mobile internet in India speculated a doom for many of these travel agents nevertheless the broadband boom and now mobile is said to have only become a blessing in disguise for many of the offline agencies who have come online. Online travel industry is still relatively nascent in India with even less that three per cent of the market share however, it is said to take another two years for this space to see double digits growth. However when it comes to individual performance every agency boasts of high growth, take for instance MakeMyTrip.com, which claims to have grown by around 88 per cent over last fiscal year, which is said to be 15-20 per cent higher than industry growth. Cleartrip eyes 60 to 70 per cent increase in 2010/11 as against 2009.

While the United States is said to be the largest online travel market in the world, India is also soon catching up with over an estimated 40 per cent of the airline tickets being sold online. This apart, many of these OTA’s are also seeing a significant increase in hotel bookings and train tickets as well. However one of the main challenges also lay in the low broadband penetration in the country.

exchange4media.com, spoke to couple of industry players to find out more on the state of online travel agencies in India, the challenges and the future trends.

Where they stand
Deep Kalra, Founder & CEO, MakeMyTrip.com, stated, “While the US market is clearly the largest online travel market in the world, the ‘offline to online shift’ has been the fastest ever in the Indian market, with over 40 per cent of all air tickets being bought online, in under three years. From $295 million in 2005, the market for online travel bookings is estimated to grow to US$ six billion by 2010 and OTAs are expected to corner around 23 per cent share of the total travel market. The focus for most players is on profitability. Discretionary travel has of course been impacted by the economic slow-down. We’ve seen that people are now taking shorter vacations and in destinations closer to country. There is also a marked reduction in long-haul destinations especially towards Europe and the Americas.”

Ashwin Damera: CEO and Co-founder, Travelguru.com noted, “Travel Portals are still less than 2-3per cent of all travel transactions in India. The industry therefore is still very nascent. We will have a better assessment only on the next 2-3 years when the industry has double digit share of bookings. However, we should see strong transaction growth in the years to come. Online travel is the fastest growing category in the e-commerce segment. The customers are realizing the benefits of using online travel portals to book their hotels through online travel portals as it is easy and saves them time. Features like Maps (locate the hotels on the map), Hotels Reviews (read customers feedback of the hotel before they book), Amenities, Video Tour etc and also offer great deals / offers, special credit card promotions and so on.”

According to Noel Swain, VP – Marketing, Cleartrip, “There have been a tremendous amount of adoption of booking travel online over the past three years and it has become more significant over the past two years, especially by low cost carriers which started using online as their key distribution networks. We’ve been around 3 years now and we have grown from booking few customers a month to now booking over 7000 tickets per day. We have also seen continuous adoption month on month over the past three years where customers use online channels to not only book airline tickets but also graduating to other products like that of international and domestic hotels and most recently railways.”

Battling the economic slowdown
Kalra explained, “By the second half of 2008, as demand from international tourists and corporate dried up, most players were facing a downturn – including suppliers (airlines and hotels) and also a lot of intermediaries. The Online travel industry was fortunate as it gained market share from the offline players. MMT grew over 100 per cent (from 2007 for the first eight months in 2008) and registered over 80 per cent growth in the period Sep-Dec 2008 thus averaging a 90 pre cent y-o-y growth.”

“The phenomenal growth is noteworthy as industry has shrunk over the last few months and most of it has come from the fact that, more customers are turning online in search of good deals, and within the online space the competition is becoming less fierce as some players are finding it harder to keep throwing advertising money to buy revenues. Since technology is our backbone, the operating costs for OTAs lend themselves to fewer wastages or components that can drive savings. So the success of OTAs would be largely dependent on increasing margins from existing products and non-air revenues going up” he added.

According to Damera, “The travel industry did get effected by the slow down, with customers hesitating to spend on their holidays. Travelguru and the hotels came out with great offer this year like 25 per cent cash back on Hotels, Travelguru had magic holiday earlier in the year which gave customers the 3rd night free on booking 2 nights. Currently there is a similar offer for hotels in Goa… In this way we were able get great offers to our customers. This indirectly saw us getting increased bookings.”

The trends to watch out for
Kalra said, “Focus area for us will be to drive bundled and accommodation products online as well as also increase contribution from retail channel. We are looking towards launching online car rentals and airport transfers soon. It is a natural attach to our various other products such as air and holiday products. We are also offering bundled products like flights-plus-hotels to incentivize booking for nascent categories like hotels. I see online hotel buying as the big high for OTAs as also new products like Buses and Railways moving online. Also for MMT, Retail is a priority with our 20 branches we believe that packages will sell via retail and call centre.”

He further said, “Domestic Travel bookings on MakeMyTrip domestic have seen a growth of 127% in FY08 – during the current year we expect strong growth to continue at over 100%. Domestic tourism is a key thrust area as well as packages to SE Asia and Europe. The big growth however will occur in the outbound travel segment – more Indians now prefer to travel overseas and with domestic airfares rationalised after the zero-rupee ticket days, we expect domestic travellers to convert into international holidays. Also we intend to continue our dominance of the OTA market by continuing to grow strongly in the air, hotel and packages business. The share of the hotels and packages revenue mix is much healthier. With our non-air business picking up significantly we are on track towards our targets.”

Damera said, “We are expecting a healthy growth next year. We have seen the economy pick up and consumer confidence growing. This has led consumer to start spending on a holidays. In general the mood in up beat and we will see growth in hotel booking in the next year too. There is increasing focus on profitability and non-air products. Some people are experimenting with trains, buses etc. Also the role of web 2.0 media is being felt and we have to give more importance to the Twitters and facebooks of the world.”

Swain observed, “Customers are graduating from buying purely air tickets to other products online as well and this is one trend that will continue to grow. We will also see new products making a mark specifically products like domestic hotels and international flights and domestic rails too which I believe has a tremendous potential as a product.”

One of the challenges, according to industry players, is getting more Indians to buy their traveling accommodation needs and bundled products online. This apart, another big challenge, as the industry sees it, is to make flight-based OTAs more profitable, especially if airline commissions change and Internet penetration in India goes up. And while the online travel agencies are still at a nascent stage in India, industry honchos are very optimistic on the road ahead, particularly as Internet penetration increases.

Yatra.com signs up for Appnomic’s application performance management service

Yatra.com signs up for Appnomic’s Application Performance

Appnomic Systems, a specialist Infrastructure & Application Management Services company, announced that Yatra.com domestic, the leading travel portal has signed up for its Application Performance Management service. Appnomic has developed a patent-pending technology for real time Application Performance Management (APM) and is offering this high-end technology as a Managed Service delivered from a multi-tenant Remote Management Center (RMC) in Bangalore, India.

Manish Amin, CTO of Yatra.Com, mentioned “For a large volume, online business like ours the critical IT support required is real time identification of transaction failures and getting to the root cause of performance issues quickly. We did a detailed Proof-of-Concept (POC) with Appnomic and saw good value in their service offering that addressed our requirements. We look forward to using the APM service to enhance our customer experience and better performance of the application”.

As per Padmanabhan, CEO of Appnomic, “Products in the market for performance management typically provide only visibility and alerts for application performance. They leave the root cause analysis, which can be complex and time consuming, to the customer. Our technology simplifies root cause analysis by advanced analytics and correlation thus providing immense value to the IT team in reducing the time to resolve performance issues. We are extremely pleased to work with Yatra and look forward to add value to their IT operations”.

Appnomic simplifies the complexities of managing information technology (IT) by offering large and mid-size companies highly automated technology, intelligent analysis and process methods. Appnomic’s unique delivery model, including application performance management and service delivery automation, enables companies to be more efficient and enhance productivity by more than 30% over current solutions in the marketplace.

Who satisfies the traveller in India?

Who satisfies the traveller in India?

Travel is quite a handful to handle. There are so many variables to satisfy the customer that it is never quite clear whether you can deliver a 
complete and foolproof package every time. For one thing, you may own an excellent hotel and have the best professionals run it for a great time for the guest but he may arrive in a foul mood after a very bad air trip.

Hey, you don’t own the airline. However, the guest is inconsolable after being given stale food which caused indigestion and hence ruined his holiday when he has already paid Rs 15,000 per night for the luxury suite.

The guest may take a taxi just outside the hotel and be short changed by the crook cabbie. However, he may carry a bad impression about the whole destination altogether . Companies such as Travelmasti.com and Yatra.com either stick to one aspect of the travel business or try to deliver a complete package. Yatra sells tickets while Travelmasti tries to deliver a complete package from airfare to pick up to room nights to sight seeing .

However, some companies own a complete business model on their websites which remains part of the travel business but distances itself from its day to day transactions. Sharat Dhall, managing director of Tripadvisor India calls it “the wisdom of crowds.” In doing so, he is now looking for Indian crowds to populate his website.

Hari Nair of HolidayIQ.com had begun this model a long time back and his website has already achieved stupendous success in the area of user reviews of hotels and destinations. In fact, the navigability of his website has surpassed every single travel site that is known specifically for Indian destinations .

However, if we specifically compare it with Tripadvisor.in, which is a global player with its parent site tripadvisor.com, we find that HolidayIQ is far ahead in various parameters. For instance, if one types Goa in the search box, we get 154 hotels in HolidayIQ against 92 results in Tripadvisor.in, which could be anything from Goa in Canary Islands, Spain or even Goa, in Swedish Lakeland, Sweden.

The site does not have any focus for the Indian traveler. Only if you scroll down quite a bit that one realizes that the first excerpt of the review is on Ginger Goa, Panaji. On the other hand, HolidayIQ satisfies from the word go with clear cut results from the search option.

TripAdvisor also has a lot of featured search results. For instance, during a search for the Ambassador hotel in Mumbai, one hits a lot of Golden Sands travel deals and Ambassador: upto 75% discount etc. This is not exactly undesirable but the fact that this fills up most of the viewable page, makes it so.

Another thing proves to be a big irritant. HolidayIQ freely dispenses with the hotel’s own website address such as www.gingerhotels.com, w w w.tajhotels.com, www.mptourism.com , www.goa-tourism .com, www.fairydalelansdowne.i n, http:// www.ambassadorindia .com/ etc. However, even if HolidayIQ’s competitor does display the hotel’s own URL, this correspondent could not locate it anywhere in the first view about the hotel on the site.

Yatra.com International shower discounts on foreign travel

Leading travel portals are selling attractive packages at an affordable price for trips abroad.

Along with weekend packages, there are special fares for students.

Most operators, in association with select airlines, are offering great deals on airfare and extra incentives till September for destinations such as the UK, Europe, the US and Canada.

A student can fly to London, Rome or Milan for just Rs 9,450 and to Dallas via New York and Helsinki for as little as Rs 19,000.

In a tie-up with international airlines, Yatra.com international, is giving extra baggage allowances from 23kg to 40kg for students, depending on the flight and destination.

Jet Airways’ “eduJetter benefits” is offering excess baggage between 40kg and 69kg for students travelling to the US, Canada, Australia, Europe, the UK and Singapore.

Jet has tied up with Matrix Cellular, a Delhi-based telecom solution provider, to offer free talk-time of up to Rs 3,500 and a rental waiver for the first month with a connection. It is also offering many other incentives such as shopping vouchers.

“While some airlines are offering custom-made packages, others operating on a system fare are offering extra baggage allowance, considering the first-timers who carry extra baggage,” Bhawna Agarwal, head of air business, Yatra.com, said.

According to a study conducted by research agency AC Nielson, travel portals such as Yatra, MakeMyTrip and Travelguru are the biggest players in the business with others such as cleartrip.com and travelocity.com following in their trail.

Nearly 80 per cent of Indians in metros prefer the online portals to plan their holidays, the study said.

It also revealed that a majority who hadn’t yet made any online booking checked the sites for information and were positively inclined to use them in the future.

The volume of business handled by the portals helps them to remain price competitive.

According to Keyur Joshi, co-founder and chief operating officer of MakeMyTrip.com, “Cost per transaction is substantially low because of the higher volumes handled online. It is, therefore, possible for online travel agencies like us to pass on the price competitive benefits to the consumers. We book around 10,000 tickets per day. Compare this with 400-500 ticket bookings per day handled by offline, brick-and-mortar agencies.”

The company has seen a year-on-year growth of 60 per cent to 70 per cent in revenues. Online visitors have grown 25-30 per cent.

Elaborating on offers made by his portal, Himanshu Singh, managing director of Travelocity.com, said the company had started giving users a 50 per cent discount on the basic airfare of any airline.

It has also launched a Rs 1,000 cash-back offer on booking at any of its 60,000 listed hotels in the world, a thousand of which are in India.

“We are planning to improve the search engines on our website and add new features to offer multi-stop functionalities. For instance, a user flying to New York would have the option to stop in London for two days. The same multi-stop functionalities will be available for domestic destinations also,” said Singh.

Nikhil Rungta joins Google India as marketing head news

Nikhil Rungta has joined Google India as head of marketing. Before this, Rungta was marketing head at Yatra.com, an online travel agency.

An official statement by Google says, “Rungta will be based out of our Bangalore office and will be responsible for driving the strategy and execution of all marketing efforts to support Google’s sales verticals, products and partnerships in India.”

Rungta has around 13 years of work experience across sales, marketing and advertising functions, since 1998, when he joined Shaw Wallace & Company as product manager and handled the Royal Challenge Premium Lager and Haywards 5000 beer brands.

In 2000, he moved to Contract Advertising as account supervisor and managed brand communications for NIIT. Thereafter, he switched to Dhar & Hoon Communications as account director and handled advertising and brand planning for clients such as Revlon, – Real Juices and Aiwa.

Later in 2003, he joined McCann Erickson India as client servicing director and handled clients such as MasterCard and Microsoft XBOX. In 2006, he moved to Yatra.com.