MakeMyTrip has made
several moves in the past few years to expand its offerings - adding ground
transportation, loyalty programs, business travel services and experiences.
Now India’s largest
online travel agency is adding destination videos to its mobile app in a move
to inspire travelers at the start of their travel planning and then provide
personalized recommendations throughout their journey.
“Trip Ideas” is the name
of the new service that displays videos - about two-thirds developed in-house
and the rest uploaded by users - in MakeMyTrip’s iPhone and Android apps. Every
idea shown in the videos is bookable through links displayed at the end.
Just launched in late
December, the company says already about 10% of the app’s one million daily
users are accessing the video content.
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“We want to be a travel super app, looking
after all travel needs for our customers. And we realized this was a gap in our
offering,” says MakeMyTrip
COO Vipul Prakash.
“The idea is to make the
trip so connected that our customers can use a single window to explore and
book, seamlessly. That is the power of the whole thing.”
Prakash says Trip Ideas
currently offers videos covering 130 destinations around the world, and he
expects that number to reach 200 by February. The videos are either one or
seven minutes in length and are grouped by themes such as adventure, beach,
food and wildlife.
In the next couple of
months, Prakash says it will add personalization, surfacing videos that tie
into the user’s upcoming itineraries.
“Because they are
booking on our portal, we know when they are going, how many people are going.
So we can use Trip Ideas to give them information about their trip: For a
couple we can show them videos about romantic spas. If it is a family, we can
show family activities,” he says.
In April 2019, Trip.com
Group (then Ctrip) gained a 49% stake in MakeMyTrip following a share exchange
agreement with Naspers. When asked if the idea for Trip Ideas was developed with input from Trip.com Group, Prakash says, “I would say the other way around. This
has been our stated vision for the last few years, and I would say this is what
actually got Ctrip and MakeMyTrip closer. The business model and the long-term
vision of both companies is exactly the same.”
Earlier in December, MakeMyTrip launched TripMoney, a line of
credit that enables qualified customers to spread their travel payments over 12
months. Customers apply in the MakeMyTrip app and get an approval decision in
30 seconds.