Cleartrip targets online ticket, hotel booking market

Kolkata, Nov 22 (UNI) Newly launched travel portal Cleartrip is trying to catch on the growth in online air ticket and hotel booking market in India.

The company currently clocking 400-500 transactions every day expects the number of transactions to go up to four lakh over a year's time, Cleartrip's director-business development Stuart Crighton told reporters here today.

" Currently the online air ticket and hotel booking market is only three per cent of the overall travel market. We expect it to grow to 10 per cent by 2008 with the growing penetration of computers in India," Mr Crighton said.

Cleartrip expects major part of the online booking to be for the leisure travellers. "Online booking for business travellers will be around 30-40 per cent," he said.

The company presently offers air tickets domestically and has tied up with 1,500 hotels for the online booking facility.

" We will launch our international booking operations next year," he said.

Cleartrip is also looking at value added services and would soon launch an ad campaign to promote its products. "We are looking at mobile solutions for online booking in future," he said.

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