MakeMyTrip Bets on the Pandemic Speeding Up India’s Shift to Online Travel
Skift Take
Executives are fine-tuning their strategy by pushing more into business travel management, tours-and-activities sales, and international bus booking.
MakeMyTrip Group is betting that the coronavirus pandemic will put an existing Indian national trend of buying more travel online on a faster timeline.
"Given the drive toward contactless travel engagement forced by this pandemic, we believe online booking adoption should accelerate even faster," said Deep Kalra, group executive chairman of the online travel company based in Gurugram, India.
During an earnings call on Friday, Kalra called out a report by Goldman Sachs from late July that predicted the pandemic would hasten India's shift from offline, traditional agencies to online ones.
After the pandemic, Goldman Sachs expects India's online travel market to grow at a pace of 14 percent through 2025. Online booking of hotels will grow 20 percent a year on average through 2025, given low internet penetration now, wrote analyst Heath Terry.
A faster pace of online bookings is critical to MakeMyTrip Group's game plan. Growing all its travel product offerings is not cheap. The
