EaseMyTrip Opens Retail Store in Patna
25.08.2023 - 13:39
/ skift.com
/ Amrita Ghosh
India-based online travel platform EaseMyTrip opened its first offline retail store in Patna in the north Indian state of Bihar, it announced through an exchange filing. The move is aligned with the company’s expansion plans and objective of tapping customers who prefer ‘meet and greet’ kind of an experience. The store will offer services like flight and hotel bookings, purchasing bus, train and group fare tickets, and availing holiday, cruise and charter packages, along with the add-on services of visa application and related formalities. In another development, the company has also announced its renewal of a long-term contract with travel technology provider InterGlobe Technology Quotient for seamless access to Travelport+ (1G), a travel commerce platform for booking tickets. EaseMyTrip stands to gain a sum of $12.2 million over a term of agreement which it could further utilize for its inorganic growth and global expansion.
To incentivize overseas tourists to come to India, the government should simplify visa processes, address safety concerns of tourists coming to India, improve infrastructure, foster partnership with the private sector and leverage technology, a Nangia Andersen report said. Despite the pandemic-induced challenges, India received 6.2 million foreign tourists in 2022, with a growth rate of 307.9 percent as compared to 1.52 million in 2021. The foreign exchange earnings from tourism in the country also increased by 107 percentfrom $8 billion in 2021 to $16.4 billion in 2022, according to the government’s provisional estimates. Inbound tourism is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 12 percent from 2022 to 2027, driven by rising disposable incomes and growth of the middle class, according to the ‘Inbound Tourism in India – Unlocking the potential’ report, in association with industry body Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Before the pandemic, solo travelers accounted for roughly a third of hotel bookings by inbound travelers. But a push for social interaction and India’s growing reputation as a couples getaway has since led families and couples to take a majority share of inbound bookings, according to travel tech firm RateGain Travel Technologies’ India Inbound Travel Trends report. Earlier this week, the Indian Association of Tour Operators had urged a rollback of the 5-20 percent tax collected at source on overseas tour packages, effective July 2023, to revive inbound tourism. The hike in tax would hit the Indian outbound tour operators hard, as travelers could bypass them and book outside the country, causing losses for both the government and operators.
Tata Group-owned Air India has entered into an interline partnership with Vistara — a
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