Cleartrip Launches Corporate Travel Booking Tool: India Report

09.02.2024 - 19:53 / skift.com / Hyatt Hotels / Akasa Air / Bulbul Dhawan

Flipkart-owned online travel company Cleartrip has launched ‘Out of Office’, a corporate travel management product. The product launch comes against the backdrop of Cleartrip’s aim to focus primarily with corporate booking travel.

In a statement, Cleartrip has said that the platform has been processing a monthly business volume of INR 200 million ($2.4 million). The Out of Office platform, which has several early-stage adopters including ACC Limited and MGM Healthcare, allows organizations to manage multiple booking behaviors, such as self booking and travel desk booking, and change or build policies in real time. 

Increasing demand: Post Covid, corporate travel has been on a rise in India. The country has been witnessing a rise in meetings and conferences, and this has been supplemented by rapidly developing MICE infrastructure all over India in the form of Jio World Convention Centre, the revamped Pragati Maidan, which hosted the G20 Leadership Summit, and Yashobhoomi convention center. Apart from this, multiple business hotels are also being developed to cater to the growing demand for conferences and meetings.

More Indians traveled to Sri Lanka in the month of January than to Maldives. After the relations between India and Maldives soured last month, Indians rapidly cancelled their bookings to Maldives. This led to India falling to the fifth position as a source market from its previous undisputed top position.

According to the figures released by Maldives Tourism, 15,006 Indian tourists visited the island destination between January 1 and 31. On the other hand, Sri Lanka, where India remained the top source market for the month, witnessed 34,399 tourists from India.

Soon after the India-Maldives row, Indian companies and celebrities took to promoting domestic beach destinations such as Lakshadweep. Online travel agency MakeMyTrip launched a new campaign called ‘Beaches of India’, while EaseMyTrip suspended all flight bookings to Maldives.

Hyatt has announced the opening of 135-keys Ronil Goa, making the entry of JdV by Hyatt brand’s entry into India. The brand’s launch is a part of Hyatt’s expansion within the leisure market in India. According to Sanjae Sharma, managing director, India and Southwest Asia, Hyatt, the company is looking to expand the JdV’s footprint throughout the subcontinent. 

Last year, the company had said that it is planning to reach the milestone of having 100 hotels in India over the next five years, and has been expanding aggressively with Hyatt Place and Hyatt Regency brands. In December, it opened its first-ever Hyatt Place hotel in Bihar with the launch of Hyatt Place Bodh Gaya.

Indian Hotels Company, parent of the Taj Hotels brand, has signed its first hotel in