Vivek Seal 
 
New Delhi: Makemytrip, the online travel-booking portal, is putting “strong emphasis” on car rentals, rail tours and domestic and international travel holiday packages to boost its growth in the saturated and low-margin online travel-booking domain, its top official said.

The Gurgaon-based company, in the last fiscal, posted Rs 1,000 crore in gross bookings, and about 73 % of that came from the airline bookings.

“We are consciously growing our non-air business … air tickets is our bread & butter… but we are very keen to sell other stuff like hotel bookings, travel packages and international holidays,” Deep Kalra, chief executive of Makemytrip told DNA Money.

Industry reports peg the total travel industry in India at about $20 billion, of that about $2 billion is from online airline bookings.

“You have international airline bookings, tours, packages, car rentals etc… so there is 90% of the pie for us to target,” Kalra said.

Kalra also added that India is the fastest-growing travel market in the world and it is expected to grow at the compounded rate of 9%-9.5% over the next 10 years, especially the younger generation.

“Now today’s generation is saying that I have the money … I will travel and that is the main reason why online travel is clicking in a big way,” Kalra said.

In the past couple of years the online travel bookings has seen many entrants jumping in the fray for their share of the pie including Makemytrip, Yatra, Travelguru, Cleartrip, Arzoo and Ezeego1.

However, Kalra disagrees that the market is saturated for online travel portals, which address the common man who is a bargain hunter.

“In the last two years, there has not been any serious new entrant who has come in the domain,” he said.

ABN Amro Bank India, in collaboration, with Makemytrip launched a co-branded travel credit card, and the bank said it expects to sell around 75,000-1,00,000 “Go Cards” in 2008.

Source : DNAIndia