Asmita Mukherjee - Hyderabad Hotels will be the single biggest focus area for Flipkart-owned travel portal Cleartrip following the relaunch of the vertical about seven months ago, with aims to expand its partner hotel network from 20,000 to 80,000 this year, across two- to five-star categories.
In 2023, Cleartrip intends to add 60,000 more hotels to its listings, chief executive officer Ayyappan R. said in an interview. “In three years, we want hotels to be our number one business and not air. Even during the best of times, hotel had only 60-65% occupancy in the country, and is a very perishable inventory. We need to have a solution for it. In the online travel aggregator (OTA) space, even the largest player has air as its biggest business vertical. For us, we are very clear, it will commercially be a very important segment as it will not just be about taking the share away from other OTAs, but building ourselves a new segment.” About 50% of airline transactions happen online, while it is just 20% for hotels, he said.
