EaseMyTrip is in focus as its stock has jumped over 8 percent in August so far with domestic air travel getting costlier and bookings picking up pace amid the festive season.

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Reflecting on the change in travel pattern, Prashant Pitti, co-founder and director of EaseMyTrip.com said, “There is this thing called revenge travel and people are splurging on it.”

Pitti said the bookings for 4-star or 5-star properties have almost doubled up and the reason could also be that people would want a better level of sanitisation at this time. He added that the average duration of the stay has also gone up from 3.2 days to 4.7 days.

Moreover, with an increase in bookings for business class tickets, the EaseMyTrip director says it seems people are actually on a “splurge mode” for travel since they had kind of bottled up themselves for the last year and a half.

Talking about the passenger booking trend, he said it surely hasn’t reached the pre-pandemic level but things are moving in the right direction. “In Q1 of FY22, we did a total business of about Rs 360 crore odd. In the Q4 of FY21, we did business of about Rs 900 crore. So, of course, there was a sharp decline in the last quarter due to the devastating second wave (of COVID019) that we all were affected by,” he said.

Pitti added that according to the latest statistics, the company’s non-air bookings have gone up dramatically, which is basically bus, train and hotels.

“If I speak specifically for the train bookings, we are doing somewhere around 2,000 transactions a day on the train itself. It is growing pretty fast. I think that is because India is unlocking right now. People are travelling from their hometowns, coming back to work location, or going out for a vacation right now or during the weekend. The numbers are increasing all across the segment,” the EaseMyTrip co-founder explained.

He also said that the firm is witnessing a very strong recovery. “For example, in the month of July, we did a total gross booking of Rs 225 crore, which is somewhere around 65 percent of the entire past quarter, and August is coming out to be even better. So, we are on the path of recovery, however, to say that we have come to pre-pandemic number would be a little bit of over-estimation.”

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Also Read: Thomas Cook expects bookings to improve; sees traction in Kashmir, Ladakh

(Edited by : Abhishek Jha)

First Published:Aug 25, 2021 2:35 PM IST