How did Cleartrip come up with the idea of Cleartrip Tatkaal offering 50% off on domestic flights and hotels? How does it work for the consumer and the company – is it open to everyone who books on Cleartrip?
In the travel ecosystem, Tatkaal has always existed as a service to fast-track access to travellers who are willing to pay a premium. With Cleartrip Tatkaal, we wanted to reverse the logic while maintaining the essence and perception. We decided to do so by making domestic air travel and hotel bookings more accessible to people by providing a limited ‘Tatkaal’ window every day at 12 noon.
The prospect of booking daily at 12 noon and getting 50% off creates an excitement among consumers. We wanted to create this very excitement and urgency to grab amazing deals every day. With this innovative proposition, we are helping consumers fulfil their travel dreams, be it affording air travel or staying in a luxury property. We’re disrupting the Online Travel Agency (OTA) space, while staying true to our core DNA – keeping travel simple and accessible.
Please take us through the different marketing initiatives/campaigns launched by Cleartrip so far and how they have helped in business growth.
Post COVID, the industry has recovered >80% of pre-COVID levels. Just when the world started opening up, we introduced initiatives such as EzCancel, which provides a 100% refund on cancellations, and Flexifly, which allows consumers to alter their schedule as per their convenience, enabling them to plan or postpone their travel seamlessly.
Our marketing campaign devised around these two flagship products helped us drive awareness and build confidence amongst consumers to travel again. For our association with Flipkart Big Billion Days, we launched a campaign featuring Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor, a globe-trotter by heart, who cuts across different customer cohorts, nationally and internationally. Promoting our ezCancel @ Re 1 feature, the quirky, comedic advertisements resonated with our consumers while welcoming them back to the skies.
Recently, we unveiled our massive Big Travel Sale with quirky ad films featuring Ravi Shastri, Mithila Palkar, Dhruv Sehgal and Shruti Haasan. We rolled out three different ad films promoting each offer across domestic flights, hotels, and international flights – each ad film was witty, hilarious and relatable in its creative disposition of the disappointment of missing the Cleartrip Big Travel Sale. We are also running a campaign, created in-house, to publicise the Tatkaal offering.
Going forward, what will be Cleartrip's overall marketing strategy to differentiate itself in the OTA space? Are any new campaigns in the pipeline?
The traction we are witnessing today is very promising. We will continue to launch customer-centric propositions in the coming months. Keep an eye out, we have some exciting work coming up.
Give us an idea of your marketing budget allocation across various channels. Which communication channel is in demand for the travel industry?
Given the shift in consumer behaviour, we are currently focusing on deploying impactful campaigns through digital channels. Since a bulk of our end-users are digital-first consumers, it makes sense to boost visibility where they’re spending most of their time. We are also including connected TVs in our marketing strategy, seeing the rising popularity of the avenue.
What is your sense of the post-COVID travel and tourism industry as it is opening up? What are the main challenges before the industry that Cleartrip would like to address? Does any issue require policy support?
While the skies have reopened and customers are more than keen to travel, the industry is facing several challenges. Because of the hike in Aviation Turbine Fuel (ATF) prices, there is an impact on airfares. However, due to the pent-up demand in travel, we are still seeing a healthy 80 to 90% recovery in flight bookings.
Also, visas to certain international destinations such as Europe are an issue, but we still see a demand for South-east Asia, the Middle East and Europe. For domestic travellers, there are no frequent changes and the movement is smooth. The recovery in domestic passenger traffic has reached 98% of pre-COVID levels in April and May, 2022.
For international travellers, most countries have significantly relaxed COVID-related restrictions over the past couple of months. Indian airports have witnessed a steep ramp-up in international passenger traffic – up to 72% of pre-COVID levels in May 2022. International passenger traffic is expected to reach 80-85% of pre-COVID levels during FY 2023.
What is your go-to mantra as a marketing expert?
My go-to mantra is to be disruptive, unique, and scalable always. We are building value for our customers around our core proposition of simplifying travel to amass customer loyalty for the long run.
