Cleartrip

Cleartrip was founded in 2006 as a hotels and air aggregator by Hrush Bhatt, Matthew Spacie and Stuart Crighton. Seeing the fragmentation that existed in the Indian travel and hospitality sector, the founders decided to enter the online travel space with a vision of making travel simple.[4]

Cleartrip also operates Cleartrip for Business,[5] an online corporate travel management tool; Agent Box,[6] a travel tool for travel agents; and Cleartrip Mobile,[7] a travel booking app for mobile devices. In 2012, it added new services such as Quickeys, for last-minute deals on hotel booking[8][9] and other journey planning services.[10][11][12] In April 2012, Cleartrip launched iOS app with a split-screen search feature to enable round-trip search results. Its app also came with geo-location feature to choose the airport for departure from the current location. The search platform of the app also allows to swap the from and to cities with a tap. The app is compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4S, iPod touch (3rd generation), iPod touch (4th generation) and iPad.[13]

In January 2013, Cleartrip brought air, rail and bus tickets to Apple's Passbook.[14][15] The same year the company undertook a massive UI redesign project, Tuxedo where every field in the website was thought through in terms of placement, display, action.[16]

In 2014, Cleartrip Mobile was recognized as part of Apple's Best of 2014 Trends of the year and also featured as the ‘Editor's Pick.[17][18]

In 2015, Cleartrip became the first Indian online travel agency to feature on Apple Watch[19] and by the end of 2015, its app traffic had overtaken web traffic and accounted for 59 per cent of its total traffic.[20] By May 2016 nearly 75% of Cleartrip's traffic was coming via mobile.[21]

In April 2018, Cleartrip launched an Arabic version of its website to target the growing Arabic community in the GCC region.[22]

In May 2018, Cleartrip launched an app for Amazon's Alexa voice assistant that enables Alexa users to voice search air travel options.[23][24]

With gross booking value of $1.4 billion and revenues worth of $110 million,[25] Cleartrip is one of the few companies of scale in this space. It is seeing annual growth of over 40% in MENA, driven by the increasing shift from offline to online.[26]

In 2018, Cleartrip was named as one among the only two companies that followed the GDPR and allowed users to delete personal information associated with their accounts.[27]

The company's office at Bangalore, India

The company got into strategic partnerships expanding the footprint of its integrated travel services in 48 European and 18 Southeast Asian countries.[28] In 2017, Google announced partnership with Cleartrip for its flight search application, Google Flights.[29] In June 2018, Cleartrip announced its partnership with Kerala Tourism Development Corporation to become an online seller of KTDC's exclusive set of activities.[30] In November 2019, Cleartrip entered into a partnership with PAYBACK India to offer loyalty program.[31] In 2019, Amazon partnered with Cleartrip in its first-ever global foray into flight bookings space.[32]

Mobile app - Cleartrip Mobile is a travel booking app for mobile devices.[33]

Express way - While the online payments ecosystem was still in its nascent stage in March 2012, the company launched Expressway to let users store traveller profile and payment details securely to make one click bookings.[34]

Quickeys - Quickeys was launched in 2012 for last-minute deals on hotel booking and other journey planning services.[8]

In-app flight amendments - In April 2013, Cleartrip launched In-app flight amendments to enable its users to modify or amend flight bookings entirely on the web.[35]

Waytogo - In July 2013, Cleartrip launched Waytogo a trip planning tool to help users search for various route and mode of travel options. The product also displayed layovers at transit, travel duration and distance, point to point pricing, links to more information for a particular route.[36]

Passbook Support - In January 2013 Cleartrip announced support for Passbook for its iOS users. The passes display important information about the trip upfront, with additional details on the reverse side. With location and time-based Passbook notifications, the passes automatically pop-up on the smartphone's screen, ready for use just when they're needed.[14][15]

Pricewatch - Pricewatch enables automatic refunds when a purchased airfare drops below the booked price.[37]

Multi-city flight bookings - In April 2016, Cleartrip launched multi-city flight bookings on mobile allowing consumers to book up to four flights in the same booking. Later, Cleartrip redesigned its multi-city search to deliver optimal price with a highly comprehensive flight content and improved product logic.[38]

Price Lock - In October 2016 Cleartrip enabled its users to lock prices for flight bookings through its feature PriceLock.[39]

Local Activities - Launched in 2016, a local things to do and activities platform. Cleartrip Local currently has over 15,000 activities, that caters to more than 200 interests in 50+ cities.[40][41]

Instant Search - In June 2017, Cleartrip launched Insta Search aiming to reduce the time taken to search and book hotel rooms on the Cleartrip mobile app.[42]

Shortlists - In 2019, Cleatrip introduced a new feature, Shortlists, which helps users in their international flight booking research.[43]

Tagging - Tag-based recommendations that allow users to find convenient hotels while booking.[44]

Fare alerts - Fare alerts informs its users a day or hours before an airline drops or increases its prices.[44]

Agent Box - Agent Box is a travel tool for travel agents.[6]

Cleartrip for Work (CfW) - Introduced in 2019, that lets travellers with a GST number access corporate fares on flights.[45]

Flexifly - In August 2019, Cleartrip launched Flexifly - a solution that enables flyers to change their travel date and time and switch flights between airlines without any hefty penalties. It is created for corporate and frequent travellers who often tend to reschedule their flights.[46]

In May 2010, Cleartrip launched its first overseas venture in the UAE.[47] In May 2012, it started services to the Persian Gulf nations of Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.[48] On June 21, 2018, Cleartrip announced the acquisition of Saudi Arabia-based online travel aggregator (OTA) Flyin.[49] With the acquisition of Flyin in June 2018 Cleartrip added Saudi Arabia and Egypt to that list of countries it operates in, providing Clear trip with a major footprint and customer base across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

The deal is expected to offer Cleartrip a wider outreach and a larger client base in an adjacent market.[50]

Amid a raging debate on ensuring equal Internet access for all, Cleartrip pulled out from Internet.org supporting net neutrality.