‘EaseMyTrip keen to develop non-air businesses to be a complete travel solutions provider’

The biggest pain point for consumers relying on online air ticketing platforms has for a long time been cancellation and refund, especially during the multiple lockdowns since 2020. Picking up on this insight, EaseMyTrip has launched a 59-second brand film. According to Prashant Pitti, Co-founder, EaseMyTrip, the film is a part of the new branding campaign to highlight EaseMyTrip’s free of charge, full refund policy. 

“The country is witnessing a growing air traffic demand, even from smaller cities. A significant chunk of this demographic prefers online booking. Through this campaign, we are trying to reach out to those customers and we believe that it is the right time to do so. We wish to highlight our hassle-free booking experience and exceptional customer care support during such unprecedented times. This initiative provides us with an opportunity to make more travellers aware of these unique initiatives and grow our customer base. The response and positivity to the video and the brand are good reflections to look at when we talk about the overall success of this initiative.” 

The brand film features actors Vijay Raaz and Varun Sharma in the main roles. Commenting on the synergies with the actors, Pitti says: “We believe that Varun Sharma and Vijay Raaz are unique actors with superb comic timing and have created a niche in the market basis their performances. They have a unique mass appeal that cuts across all audiences and geographies. We have consciously chosen two actors from two different generations as we believe that an association with both of them will help us reach our overall target audience efficiently. The association with Varun and Vijay are in sync with the brand, as just like these ace actors, EaseMyTrip too has established itself and gained market share purely basis performance to date.” 

Becoming a Travel Ecosystem

EaseMyTrip recently announced a partnership with regional carrier Flybig. Through this partnership, Flybig’s tickets will be exclusively sold by EaseMyTrip. All other bookings for Flybig by other online travel portals will also go through and be processed by EaseMyTrip. 

On the synergies with Flybig and strategy behind the acquisition, Pitti shares “Our partnership with Flybig marks a milestone in the Indian airline industry, making EaseMyTrip the first Indian online travel platform to become a general sales agent (GSA) for a domestic airline. Air travel is witnessing a major boom across Tier 2 and 3 cities, and Flybig’s air connectivity across remote destinations helps EaseMyTrip to widen its customer base and network. Through this partnership, we aim to bring more destinations within the reach of our growing customer base.” 

In the past three months, there have been 3 acquisition-related announcements from EaseMyTrip. One of them is a non-binding agreement offer with Traviate, India’s first B2B travel marketplace. The second acquisition was Spree Hospitality, a 1200+ room-keys hospitality management company. Says Pitti “Both these acquisitions will add a new revenue stream and fast track our expansion in the B2B and hotel and holiday portfolios rapidly. Additionally, we are also in the process of acquiring the brand name, technology, team, running business and data expertise of ‘YoloBus’, a next-generation premium intercity mobility platform.” Talking about acquisition plans in the pipeline, he added “The company will grow both organically and inorganically in FY22. We are actively looking for opportunities in the hotels and holidays segments as currently, 95% of our current business is flight bookings. We are exploring opportunities with companies that are asset-light, have strong business fundamentals and unit economics, just like us.” 

Over the years, Pitti has often expressed that the brand aims to become a complete travel ecosystem. “Most of our recent acquisitions have been in the non-air segment and we are looking to grow our presence in these segments to be a complete travel solutions provider. We will continue to run the companies as they are but we plan to grow them faster, but independently. We will look at enhancing the revenues and profitability by leveraging our existing base of customers for cross-selling. Our vast agent network will also help scale holiday bookings which will complement the company’s hotel and holiday businesses.” According to Pitti, the acquisition of YoloBus was a step in the same direction as almost 55% of all interstate travel in India happens via buses and it is a huge opportunity. 

Marketing & Expansion 

The travel sentiment that was at a low due to the second wave is being subsided by a strong rise in revenge and festive travel. While there are still travel uncertainties, there is a strong underlying pent-up travel demand. Sharing the impact of the consumer sentiment on the numbers, Pitti shared: “Q1FY22 was one of the worst periods for the travel industry due to the second wave, however, we grew our profits six-fold to more than Rs 15 crores. Additionally, in Q3FY22, we witnessed a profit jump of 84% to more than 40 crores and Gross Booking Revenue (GBR) jumped by 65% to Rs. 1,293 crores generating strong and sustainable growth for its stakeholders.” 

Talking about the marketing strategy, Pitti stated, “Seeing a recovery of the industry, in the past year, we have used big-ticket events such as IPL as well as full-page advertisements across national newspapers for marketing initiatives and will continue to explore interesting initiatives this year as well. This year, we plan to release innovative and exciting marketing efforts across digital, print and outdoor media. With the growth in passenger traffic, we will also continue to actively use in-flight branding space, as well as boarding passes as essential touchpoints for travellers. Our aim for 2022 is to sustain a right and balanced mix of both digital and offline sources. We emphasize high ROI marketing spending and instead of opting for very high marketing budgets, we try to source relevant platforms that can gain the maximum interest of our customers.”

Apart from the Indian market, EaseMyTrip is present across the UAE, Singapore, the UK, Philippines, Thailand, and the US. Sharing the plans for expansion, Pitti says, “We want to establish our air ticketing business in these countries as we forayed into these countries anticipating a huge pent-up global demand for the travel and tourism sector in the coming months. In the coming year, we plan to launch a localized travel search engine in each global subsidiary to strengthen our offerings within each country. We may also look to expand to more viable countries if we see a strong performance and value addition from our existing global subsidiaries.”