Indians to spend an additional $24 billion on online travel bookings by 2021

Online bookings in India are projected to rise from 25 per cent to 35 per cent as internet penetration increases from 33 per cent to 50 per cent, according to a latest study titled ‘How does India travel?’ by Bain & Company and Google. As India’s travel spending is set to grow from $94 billion in travel spending to $136 billion by 2021, around $24 billion (or 57 per cent) of the incremental bookings will be online. The report states that frequent flyers research online and make decisions on the basis of business needs and availability of flights and hotels. They rely heavily on travel provider websites online (59 per cent) and price comparison websites (51 per cent) for airline and hotel reviews and availability with a tendency to search first by mobile device (61 per cent) and then by laptop (26 per cent).