Top 10 Best Travel Tech Companies In India 2022
Technology has become ingrained in our daily lives, transforming how we work, shop, eat, and spend our free time. We can order food, buy home appliances, make dinner reservations, and much more with just a few easy taps on our smartphones.
Even the travel business has benefited from constant technological advancements. From our smartphones, we can now book hotel rooms, flights, sightseeing tours, and other activities and plan whole vacations.
The way we travel has changed as a result of technological advancements, making our journeys more convenient and entertaining. Because of the huge development in the tourism industry, we often refer to travel technology. Let’s look at some of these travel industry statistics and see how they help you.
What Is Travel Technology?
Travel technology refers to the use of technology to organise journeys. It helps travel agents schedule trips for their consumers, including airline tickets, hotel stays, car rentals, and other travel-related services.
They can manage anything travel-related in a matter of minutes thanks to computerised reservation systems (CRSs) given by their hotel and airline partners.
Every reservation system saves and retrieves real-time data, allowing travel agents to communicate more efficiently with all parties involved.
Travel technology allows consumers to book online without using a travel agent and automates travel firms’ bookings, payments, and back-office operations.
Travel Tech Definition:
The use of technology in the travel, tourism, and hospitality industries is known as travel tech.
IT and e-commerce technologies in tourism, travel, and hospitality are used to automate travel, save time, lower costs, and provide consumers with a seamless travel experience before, during, and after their journey.
What Role Does Technology Play in Travel?
We’ve touched on some general travel technology applications to help you grasp this game-changer in tourism. Let’s take a look at how technology is used in travel.
Here are a few of the most recent travel technology trends to keep an eye on:
The Smartphone as a Travel Companion:
Using your smartphone, you may plan a trip without any complications. More importantly, your mobile device may act as your tour guide wherever you are.
It may be used to get real-time flight updates, check into and out of hotels, and navigate your desired location. It can be used as a map and compass to point you in the direction of nearby cafes, restaurants, museums, and other attractions.
Your travel can be even more convenient and entertaining thanks to voice search and virtual assistants like Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, and Cortana.
AI and Chatbots:
AI-powered tech solutions are being used by an increasing number of online travel companies and hotels to automate bookings and give personalised services.
Chatbots are one example. They can not only provide 24/7 customer service, but they can also make reservations, answer frequently asked questions, handle payments, and have intelligent, human-like discussions. They make excellent travel companions.
AI solutions may also provide insights into customer behaviour, interests, and preferences regarding travel locations, hotels, amenities, airlines, car rental businesses, pricing, and more, thanks to machine learning.
OTAs and hotels can use this information to present or deliver relevant offers to clients.
AR and VR:
In travel, virtual reality (VR) technology allows you to relocate yourself to another area virtually. Before booking a room or making a meal reservation, you can take a virtual tour of a hotel or restaurant.
You may “teleport” yourself into the Louvre, Times Square, the Grand Canyon, or Mount Everest to marvel at the fantastic views. You could view a hundred videos on YouTube, but VR will transport you to the location.
You can also use AR (augmented reality) to take room tours and interact with various hotel amenities.
Internet of Things:
The Internet of Things (IoT) helps personalise and streamline travel.
For example, hotels that embrace IoT allow visitors to use their cellphones to operate various internet-enabled items in their rooms. They can control lighting, thermostats, televisions, and other devices.
What is the impact of technology on the travel industry?
Technological advancements have made travel automation feasible, making trip preparation less time-consuming and exciting for travellers and travel firms.
In minutes, you may plan a trip and book accommodations, tickets, flights, and much more. With your mobile device as your travel companion, you can have your trip itinerary in the palm of your hand.
With technology like augmented reality, you can stay connected no matter where you go, break down language hurdles, and even improve your packing routine. You can enjoy a unique experience that will make each trip memorable.
Travel technology has transformed tourism, and we can’t wait to see what the next chapter has for us! It is unquestionably going to be fantastic!
The leading travel technology companies in India are listed below:
1. Thomas Cook India
Thomas Cook (India) Ltd. (TCIL) is the country’s largest integrated travel services company, providing a wide range of services like Forex, Corporate Travel, MICE, Leisure Travel, Value Added Services, Visa & Passport Services, and E-Business. In 1881, the business opened its first office in India.
The Thomas Cook India Group, which operates leading B2C and B2B brands such as Thomas Cook, SOTC, TCI, SITA, Asian Trails, Allied T Pro, Australian Tours Management, Desert Adventures, Luxe Asia, Kuoni Hong Kong, Sterling Holiday Resorts Limited, TC Forex, Distant Frontiers, TC Tours, TC Visa, and Travel C, spans 25 countries across five continents and employing over 8388 people.
The Best Travel Agency: India at TTG Travel Awards 2019, Best Outbound Tour Operator at the Times Travel Awards 2018 & 2019, and Leading Company with Cutting Edge Travel Innovation at the Times Travel Awards 2018 & 2019 have all been bestowed upon TCIL. Silver was awarded Asia’s Best Integrated Report (First Time) category at the Asia Sustainability Reporting Awards.
Best Risk Management-Framework & Systems at the India Risk Management Awards 2019; Best Cash Management Solution – India at The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, Supply Chain & Risk Management Awards 2018; Best Outbound Tour Operator at the SATTE Awards 2019; Best Cash Management Solution – India at The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, Supply Chain & Risk Management Awards 2018; Best Cash Management Solution – India at The Asset Triple A Treasury, Trade, Supply Chain & Risk Management Awards 2018; Best Cash Management Solution – The SATTE Awards 2018 recognised excellence in domestic tour operations. From 2015 through 2019, he received the French Ambassador’s Award for Exemplary Achievements in Visa Issuance and the Condé Nast Traveller – Readers’ Travel Awards from 2011 to 2019.
2. Club Mahindra Holidays and Resort
Club Mahindra Holidays is a 1996-founded Indian hospitality company. It is a subsidiary of the Mahindra Group and offers timeshare vacations. Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Limited (MHRIL) is a Mahindra Group’s Leisure and Hospitality division. Its main product is vacation ownership, and its flagship brand is “Club Mahindra.” MHRIL primarily provides family vacations through vacation ownership memberships that last 25/10 years.
Club Mahindra is one of the newest additions to this list of India’s most excellent travel firms. It offers The Club Mahindra Experience, which gives you access to over 100 resorts across India and the world, opening up a world of possibilities. In Goa, you may unwind on the beach. In Manali, stay in an igloo.
In Finland, watch the Northern Lights put on a stunning performance. In Munnar, dine in a treehouse. There’s a lot to like about this vacation agency.
Club Mahindra Acacia Palms, Club Mahindra Varca, Club Mahindra Gir, Symphony Palms, Havelock Island, and other new resorts have been developed. It also allows you to travel to their resorts by taking 360 degrees virtual tours of all of them from the comfort of your place.
3. MakeMyTrip
MakeMyTrip is a 2000-founded Indian internet travel company. Based in Gurugram, Haryana, the company offers online travel services, including airline tickets, local and international vacation packages, hotel reservations, rail, and bus tickets. As of March 31, 2018, they had 14 company-owned travel stores in 14 cities, over 30 franchisee-owned travel stores in 28 cities, and counters in four of India’s main airports. New York, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Phuket, Bangkok, and Dubai are among MakeMyTrip’s offices.
Deep Kalra founded MakeMyTrip in 2000, and it has since grown into a string of successes that has revolutionised the face of India’s travel sector.
The quote “With great power comes tremendous responsibility” was crucial in helping this business shape up and accomplished what no other travel company had ever done before.
In 2017, the company merged with Goibibo and Redbus to form one of India’s most renowned tourism organisations.
Because they allow customers to research and plan their vacations utilising a variety of products and deals, this travel company has over 20 million unique customers.
4. Yatra
Yatra.com is an Indian travel search engine and online travel agency. Its headquarters are in Gurugram, Haryana. Dhruv Shringi, Manish Amin, and Sabina Chopra launched it in August 2006.
It was founded in 2006 as an internet hub for your trip locations. It is a Gurgaon-based company that provides a wide range of services, including airline ticketing, travel packages, and lodging bookings for corporate and individual clients.
The website is quite user-friendly, and they provide a variety of discounts and coupons that you can use to save money on your reservations. Yatra.com’s USP is the “Activities” service, including shopping experiences, heritage walks, and many more.
In 2012, the company made a name for itself as a leading travel provider when Salman Khan joined Yatra as a brand ambassador, directing all eyes to Yatra.com.
Indian travellers can take advantage of the following benefits by booking travel on www.yatra.com today:
Extensive Domestic Hotel Options: Yatra caters to India’s expanding middle class by partnering with over 1,000 domestic hotels in over 150 cities and towns across the country, with a particular focus on budget tourists, with a considerable number of hotels in the “under Rs 1,000 per room night” category.
Wide Variety of Air Carriers: Customers can choose from a wide range of airlines, including all major domestic airlines and low-cost carriers, on Yatra.
Booking at the Last Minute: Yatra is the only online travel business that allows users to purchase flights up to three hours before departure. This is especially useful for business travellers, as most air travel in India is booked less than three days before departure.
Best in Class Technology: For the first time in India, Yatra delivers the same technology utilised by the world’s biggest online travel businesses to India.
Dynamic Packaging: Using Yatra’s active packaging tool, customers can construct and book their travel packages for convenience and savings.
Holiday Travel Packages: In all of India’s major cities, Yatra provides passengers with well-planned vacation packages.
Yatra is the only company in India that offers a flexible airline search option, allowing customers to find the best deal within two days of their preferred travel date.
Yatra provides travel-related information, pricing, availability, and reservations for airlines, hotels, trains, buses, and vehicle rentals in India’s 5000 significant cities and remote rural locations. Yatra’s customer service centre is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, allowing business and family/leisure travellers to make well-informed and cost-effective reservations. Yatra invites passengers to submit important feedback on their user experience because it is committed to satisfying the needs of its consumers.
5. SOTC
SOTC Travel Limited, formerly SOTC Travel Private Ltd and Kuoni Travel (India) Pvt. Ltd., is a step-down subsidiary of Fairfax Financial Holdings Group. It is owned by two companies: Thomas Cook (India) Limited (TCIL) and Travel Corporation (India) Ltd. It is a travel and tourism corporation that operates in leisure travel, business travel, destination management services, and distribution visa marketing services. It was founded in 1949.
SOTC provides tailored vacations all over the world. It also organises corporate tours and offers MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events) travel packages. SOTC Trade Fair Tours seeks to meet the demands of businesspeople attending or exhibiting at international trade shows. It claims to be the first company in India to create and market escorted trips to overseas guests. SOTC has built several channels through tour packages, like ‘Bhraman Mandal’ for the Marathi-speaking people and ‘Gurjar Vishwadarshan’ for the Gujarati-speaking population. SOTC just launched the ‘Darshans’ religious trip, which aims to provide an integrated spiritual and leisure experience across India’s most prominent holy places.
Leisure travel packages, incentive travel packages, and business travel packages are the company’s central items, which helped them win SOTC Travel Honored at the 2019 French Ambassador’s Travel Awards.
The company has established a big client base of lakh people over the last 70 years.
6. Goibibo
Ashish Kashyap launched the Ibibo Group, an online Indian travel company, in January 2007. MakeMyTrip (MMT) Limited, which owns 100 per cent ownership in Ibibo Group, is a corporation’s subsidiary.
The group owns Goibibo, a B2C online travel aggregator, and RedBus.in, an online bus booking platform.
Under a Transaction Agreement dated October 18, 2016, MakeMyTrip (MMT) concluded a strategic combination with the ibibo Group on January 31, 2017, by obtaining a 100 per cent equity stake in the ibibo Group from MIH Internet, a Naspers indirect subsidiary.
Customers can choose and plan from a wide choice of options thanks to the app and website’s ease of use. The booking experience, according to them, is the quickest search and booking, the quickest payments, and customer service dedication for refunds and settlements.
7. Expedia
Expedia Group, Inc. is a consumer and small business travel online purchasing company based in the United States. Expedia.com, Vrbo (formerly HomeAway), Hotels.com, Hotwire.com, Orbitz, Travelocity, trivago, and CarRentals.com are some of the company’s websites, primarily travel fare aggregators and travel metasearch engines.
The word “Expedia” is formed from a mix of “exploration” and “speed,” according to Rich Barton, the company’s original CEO.
They worked with around 80000 hotels worldwide and won the Award for Leading Online Travel Agency Website 2013, one of the industry’s most promising honours.
8. Cleartrip
Cleartrip (formerly Cleartrip Travel Services Private Limited) is an Indian internet travel company headquartered in Bangalore. In India and the Middle East, the company operates an online travel aggregator website for booking flights, train tickets, hotel reservations, and activities. It has offices in India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
In 2018, the short trip won the Excellence in Travel Blogging Award in Company Operated Blog, demonstrating its superiority to the market.
If you’re a frequent traveller looking for a simple way to book tickets on the fly, Clear Trip is the ideal option. The app’s UI is simple and easy to use, and it works on both Android and iOS smartphones.
9. EaseMyTrip
Easy Trip Planners Ltd (EaseMyTrip.com) is an online travel company based in Delhi, founded in 2008 by Pitti brothers: Nishant Pitti, Rikant Pittie, and Prashant Pitti. The brand is a household name in the Indian travel sector, with a reputation for offering the greatest travel discounts. Customers are attracted to their USP of giving Zero Convenience Fees*. They are always running promotions and discounts on flights, hotels, buses, taxis, and vacation packages.
It presently has qualified employees of 477 well-trained personnel who assist the company’s growth. Throughout its agent network, offices, and franchisees, the organisation has created a presence in every pin-code after earning the trust of more than 8.81 million customers. It has a large B2B network, with 52,752 registered travel agent partners (and counting) and 10,477 corporate clients (as of September 30 2019). After 11 years of business, the company has offices in significant Indian cities, including Noida, Bangalore, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom are among its international offices (subsidiary firms).
10. ixigo
ixigo, which began operations in 2007, is one of India’s greatest travel providers. ixigo, which Rajnish Kumar and Aloke Bajpai founded.
They are dedicated to giving the finest possible client service. As a result, they linked technology, innovation, and cost-effectiveness. This app will provide you with amazing deals and discounts.
They are ready to meet your every travel need, from the train, bus, flight, and taxi bookings to hotel and destination bookings.
Edited and published by Ashlyn
