Online air ticketing scores over rail bookings

Online air ticket bookings have overtaken online train ticket bookings as travel portals such as makemytrip.com dominate the top-of-mind category brand recall and the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd (irctc.co.in) coming a distant second, according to a recent study conducted by JuxtConsult for the online travel industry.

Contrary to popular perception, air tickets have become the most bought travel product online with 76 per cent of the online ticket users having bought an air ticket compared with only 47 per cent online users purchasing a train ticket, and almost all (97 per cent) online ticket users have booked a train or an air ticket, according to the report.

According to JuxtConsult's previous report in April 2006, "Online rail bookings were higher than air ticket bookings with 33 per cent of online users booking rail tickets compared with 22 per cent of online users booking flight tickets," said Sanjay Tiwari, director, JuxtConsult.com.

The reason for the increase in sales of air tickets could be attributed to the brand recall value of internet portals such as makemytrip.com. According to the report, makemytrip.com has the best top-of-mind brand recall at 30 per cent, Irctc.co.in follows with 19 per cent, and Travelguru has nine per cent brand recall.

The report further notes that given the current brand momentum, Makemytrip is likely to gain primary consumer share by four per cent, and IRCTC and Yatra are likely to lose some share, at five per cent and two per cent each, respectively.

Other than that in the short term, the online travel market is not expected to show any major changes, said Tiwari, adding in the long term the market will undergo a consolidation with 2-3 players emerging big from the current 7-8 portals offering online travel services.

The online survey was conducted by JuxtConsult in November 2006, among a sample base of over 2,000 internet users.