Mobile booking for travel tickets gains speed

With affordable internet services, decline in handset prices, more thrust from service providers and convenience of mobile usage, an increasing number of people have begun to plan their travel through mobile phones.

Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), the country's leading online-ticketing platform, has seen a jump of 60 per cent in mobile ticket booking between January and October.

"The actual increase has been seen from March-April. I think, one of the key reasons for this increase has been awareness and the ease of use," says Sunil Kumar, deputy general manager (portal), IRCTC.

M-Commerce is still a small component of mobile value added services (VAS) in India. According to 'Mobile VAS in India: 2010' of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), it is estimated that all M-Commerce services, like mobile ticketing, mobile coupons, etc, contribute four per cent to mobile VAS revenues.

If one takes into account the number of movie ticket booking through phones, mobile ticketing will be an area to watch out for.

Thirty-year-old Sangeeta Pillai got her first brush with mobile ticket booking by chance, but she now prefers to book her airline tickets through mobile phones. She says: "We were in one of the remote areas of Goa and a friend had to rush back to Mumbai. The only way to access a travel portal was through handsets.

We were a bit apprehensive, but, to my surprise, the process was very smooth and we took a print out of the tickets on reaching the hotel."

Realising the potential, almost all the travel portals have launched their mobile applications for bookings. "From our experience, people access mobile application more on weekends. This mode is preferred for last-minute travel. On an average, five per cent of the last-minute business trips are planned online. But, this incidence is as high as 22 per cent through mobile phones," says Noel Swain, executive vice-president (supplier relations), Cleartrip.

Cleartrip has seen mobile bookings go up during the festival season. "We launched this product on the basis of feedback from users. Since October 2, we have seen a surge in bookings via mobile phones," he adds. He also believes that ease of mobile usage is the key for the success of this platform.

Amit Somani of MakeMyTrip (MMT)s agrees, "The overall number is still small - around five per cent of our total domestic bookings. Conversions to mobile bookings are improving. With cheaper smartphones, better utility on mobile sites, bigger screen sizes and increased security of mobile transactions, the conversion rate should go up significantly in the next couple of years." MakeMyTrip has seen a rise of 20 per cent in mobile bookings during the festive season.

MMT uses mobile as a platform not just for air ticket bookings, but also for a host of other customer-support features like cancellation of tickets, tracking refund on cancelled tickets and so on.

Meanwhile, Yatra.com is taking its mobile platform accessibility a step ahead by integrating its application into Sony Ericsson mobile phones. "Using mobile phone for ticket booking is a very urban phenomenon and restricted to smartphone users," Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO, Yatra Online, explains.