“India has grown to be one of our top markets at Skyscanner. We have seen spectacular growth coming for both International and Domestic travel, with international bookings via Skyscanner +121 per cent ahead of 2019 levels and Domestic bookings +639% above 2019 levels. In the first week of January 2024 alone, India saw an increase of 35 per cent in searches when compared to the same period in 2023. We have seen a strong demand for travel in the Indian market that is growing rapidly. Based on our data, searches from India have grown by over 55 per cent in 2023 compared to 2022,” Hugh Aitken.

In the Media Roundtable, Hugh Aitken, VP,Strategic Relations and Development, Skyscanner shares his views about Sky Scanner presence in India, the opportunities it sees in this market, role and value of meta search engines ,booking patterns across the region and relation with the partner community.

What are some of the opportunities that Skyscanner sees in the travel market and how it is catering to the need of Indian travelers?

Skyscanner is a global travel marketplace, where we have over 120 million unique visitors who come to us globally and then over 100 million downloads globally, about 100 million registered accounts of travellers who come back to us regularly as well. And, if I think about the flight searches, age group between 20 and 25 start their flight searches in Skyscanner.

Skyscanner is over 20 years old now, started in Edinburgh in Scotland, but very quickly started developing that footprint. A sizable part of our business is in Europe and Middle East and across APAC. We also have big presences in Japan and Korea and then of course we work across all the Americas.

In our global outlook on travel, India within that has grown really substantially over the last few years and it now one of our top five markets.We have grown 120 per cent growth internationally since 2019. We’ve seen 121% growth in people’s bookings that we’re doing on international in India, and 639 per cent growth in domestic searches in India. Comparing January 2024 with January 2023, we saw 35 per cent growth in searches which is a substantial growth in the Indian market.

I think as a marketplace, we have got two sides. One is our travelers and on the other side, we’ve got our partners. We have really strong partnerships with all of the Indian airlines, also all of the Indian OTAs and global OTAs. So our job is to plug them into our marketplace, those partners, and to connect them with travelers.

At Skyscanner, travelers can see the best prices and the best choice. So I think India is a great example, actually, of a market where we’ve invested in getting the supply right and then we can invest in bringing travelers into our marketplace.

Can you also talk about some initiatives that you have done in India?

First of all, we launched our India site last year, which allows us to just develop that local presence in this country. We have been spending a lot of time growing supply from the Indian market. We have worked on various reports that include, the Travel Trends Report; Travelling Focus Report; and a First Trip Report that looked particularly at the Gen Z market and their desire to travel.

It looked at our planning and wanting to travel. So we invested heavily in our products in India, and we also invest globally in our products, but all of that is benefitting in India as well as some real localisation.

What is the role of a Meta Search Engines (MSC) in today’s travel ecosystem, and how have you seen it evolve through the years here?

First of all, if I look at the place that we have in travel planning, it’s very different from others. So close to 60 per cent of people come to Skyscanner not knowing where they want to go and or when they want to go somewhere.

So they’re looking for inspiration, and that’s probably very different from people who would go to airline sites. I think if you go to an airline site, you’re probably much further down that travel planning funnel. So people come to us for inspiration.

Our most popular destination globally that’s searched is everywhere. And that’s grown by 55 per cent year on year in India, actually. So, 55 per cent more of our people are coming in and typing everywhere. And, if you think about the development of it, we’ve seen a huge number of people who come to Skyscanner for that early stage travel.

What challenges do you think that airlines and meta-search engines face today with regards to travel, experience, etc.?

The most important thing in a marketplace like ours is to keep a real close eye on the fundamentals, so that our travelers get the best price. Do they see the best coverage? They’ve got all the flights they want to look for and they’ve got all the choice. And are those prices and is that data accurate and timely and fast?

So the most important thing we focus on are those three fundamentals before anything else. The next thing is, and we’re innovators in how we can use technology to enhance what we’re showing those travelers, the richness of the data we’re showing them, making sure that data is more and more relevant to that individual traveler.

How do you think one should collaborate to address these challenges?

I think, the first thing is particularly with our airlines and even our online travel agents, we have a very complementary role in the travel planning. So we would say that we’re much higher on that travel planning funnel.

First, we work collaboratively knowing that we are ultimately trying to get to the same place, which is to get travelers on to the aircraft, but we’ve got a very complementary role in that.The second bit with our partners is, we share a lot of data with them. So we always have shared data with airlines, but increasingly we’re sharing more and more data with our airlines to help them make smart choices when they’re working with, when they’re serving their content onto Skyscanner, be that advertising or be it their flight content.

So that’s been a big, big development for us. And increasingly, if you look at India, we work very closely with all the airlines here and have really good, strong partnerships.

How important are partners in this whole journey of ensuring a seamless experience for travelers? And while you touched upon some of your partners, can you speak more a bit about your partners in India that you work with from airlines, OTA, etc?

We work with all the major airlines and OTAs in India and also a number of international OTAs who feature in our Indian marketplace.At an operational level, working with them to make sure that their content is there, their API is working and serving the right prices and working fast. So a lot of the basic fundamentals we spend a lot of time on.

We have a feature in Skyscanner that when you search in Skyscanner, we get what we call a leave-behind page. But there’s a page that’s left on your screen that asks you to rate the experience. And you can give it one out of five stars.

We ask all of our travelers to rate what their experience, the booking experience has been through the airline and all the travel agents. And we share all of that data with our partners. That allows them to identify and improve their experience. And then importantly, how can you use Skyscanner to help promote your brand, to help you with the performance of your network.