MakeMyTrip Changed India's Travel System

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Imagine planning your trip a few decades back, like in the 1990s, and imagine planning your trip now. Can you notice the difference 🤗 While that was a lengthy process back then, there is no hassle and no endless searching, just a few taps on your phone today.

That’s what millions of travelers experience daily with India's travel giant, MakeMyTrip. But how did a small startup become a global leader in the fiercely competitive travel industry?

Let's see the whole story.

MakeMyTrip, founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra, is one of India’s leading online travel agencies (OTA), offering a vast suite of travel services, including flight bookings, hotel reservations, and holiday packages.

It has grown exponentially and become a household name in India’s travel industry by focusing on user-friendly platforms and exceptional customer service.

As the travel market became digital, MakeMyTrip needed a product that could easily handle high traffic, process thousands of bookings daily, and cater to customers across multiple travel categories.

They faced stiff competition from other OTAs and needed to maintain customer satisfaction, optimize their services, and ensure a simplified booking experience while constantly innovating.

So, how did they navigate these issues? And what did they do to overcome these?

Finding the Path

When MakeMyTrip launched in 2000, India’s travel market was largely offline, with travelers relying on local agents and phone bookings. Deep Kalra, the founder, saw an opportunity to change this.

The internet was growing slowly in India, and he believed an online platform could offer travelers a convenient way to book flights and hotels. They then researched international online travel companies like Expedia to understand how these platforms worked.

The global success of these businesses showed that online travel booking could also be successful in India, where the middle class was growing, and more people started to travel.

They found that India had no online platform where travelers could easily compare prices, choose from various travel options, and book everything in one place.

Moreover, the process of booking international flights from India was often complicated. Travelers had to deal with multiple agents or airlines, which was time-consuming.

MakeMyTrip identified this gap and aimed to simplify it by offering a one-stop shop for travel bookings. Initially, the company focused on Indians traveling abroad, especially to the US. By 2005, international flights made up over 70% of their bookings.

Check out this video by MakeMyTrip promoting tension-free international trips:

This international focus allowed them to grow while waiting for India's domestic online travel market to develop.

Key Decision-Making Factors:

• Indian travelers needed a platform that could handle all their travel needs in one place. MakeMyTrip allowed users to book flights, hotels, and even holidays through a single platform.

• Since online shopping was new in India, people were cautious. MakeMyTrip worked hard to build trust by offering transparent pricing and secure payment methods.

• The company integrated with major airlines and hotel chains worldwide, providing various travel options to attract international travelers.

By analyzing international and domestic markets, MakeMyTrip positioned itself as the go-to platform for Indian travelers, setting the stage for its future success.

Executing the Path

Once the founder found the unbridged gap in the Indian travel industry, here's how he moved further to becoming one of the most competitive platforms in the travel space:

1. Onboarding and integration

Implementing MakeMyTrip's platform needed a vast approach to ensure it could handle all the needs of the travel industry while connecting with several airlines, hotels, and payment gateways was a challenge.

The company began by partnering with major airlines, including Air India, Jet Airways, and Emirates, to ensure real-time availability of flights.

This integration was crucial to give users accurate data, especially for last-minute bookings and cancellations. The platform also established partnerships with over 80,000 hotels worldwide.

Check out this ad showing several hotel options available at the fingertips:

This gave users various options, from budget to luxury stays, and integrating hotel listings required close coordination, especially with smaller or local hotels, where data digitization was limited.

MakeMyTrip invested in backend infrastructure that could pull hotel availability and pricing information in real time, ensuring that users always had up-to-date options.

2. Building a scalable platform

The company faced one of its biggest hurdles in scaling the platform to handle large traffic spikes, especially during holiday seasons like Diwali and Christmas, when the number of users surged.

The technical team worked hard to develop a robust infrastructure that could handle thousands of simultaneous transactions without slowing down the system.

They chose cloud-based solutions that allowed them to scale up server capacity when demand was high. As a result, MakeMyTrip could handle millions of users during peak travel periods without heavy disruptions.

3. Payment gateway integration

In India, people use several payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, net banking, and, increasingly, mobile wallets. MakeMyTrip integrated with all major Indian payment gateways to let travelers pay in any payment method they want.

Here’s a video showing the easy booking and payment features:

This also involved going through SSL encryption and PCI-DSS compliance for security to build customer trust in their platform. They also worked with international payment gateways to ensure foreign travelers could easily make payments for Indian bookings.

4. Challenges and support

Initially, the company struggled with technological issues related to real-time updates for bookings and inventory. For example, customers booked a flight or hotel only to find that it had already sold out.

This led to customer dissatisfaction and affected the company's reputation. To address this, MakeMyTrip worked on an automated synchronization system that updated the platform’s inventory every few seconds.

And, integrating local suppliers (mainly smaller hotels) into the platform posed a challenge. Many smaller hotels in India were not fully digitized, making it difficult for them to provide accurate inventory information.

To overcome this, MakeMyTrip’s team created a dedicated onboarding system where hotels could manually update their availability and pricing. Over time, this system became more automated as hotel partners grew familiar with the technology.

5. Customer support improvements

As the platform grew, MakeMyTrip recognized the need for a strong customer service team to handle queries, booking issues, and cancellations.

They set up a 24/7 customer service center, initially focusing on international travelers since it was their primary market once. This service allowed travelers to resolve issues, differentiating MakeMyTrip from traditional travel agents.

As the platform scaled, they introduced an automated chat support system on the app and website, which could handle basic queries about bookings, cancellations, and refunds.

The chatbots reduced user wait times and allowed the customer service team to focus on more complex issues.

6. Mobile optimization and app launch

In 2012, as mobile internet penetration in India started rising, MakeMyTrip focused heavily on optimizing its platform for mobile users. They made a mobile app which quickly became a popular Indian travel app.

By making the app intuitive and easy to use, the company saw a rapid shift in customer behavior, with over 70% of bookings now coming from mobile devices. The app also offered special discounts and deals for mobile users.

Check out this video targeting the international market:

7. Investment in AI and ML

In recent years, MakeMyTrip implemented AI and ML into its platform to improve personalization. The AI-based recommendation system uses customer data to suggest hotels, flights, and holiday packages based on previous searches and booking history.

This improved the user experience and increased the likelihood of bookings. The platform’s AI algorithms also reduced search time by 30% on average, making the travel planning process more efficient for users.

8. Optimization for peak seasons

To handle the surge in bookings during peak seasons like school holidays and festivals, MakeMyTrip developed predictive algorithms that adjusted pricing based on demand.

This dynamic pricing model ensured users could get the best deals even during high-demand periods. Moreover, the platform could handle traffic spikes up to 5 times the normal volume.

Becoming Go-To Travel Platform

The adoption phase of MakeMyTrip’s journey tells how well the platform aligned with customer needs, especially in a rapidly growing digital environment.

By 2010, MakeMyTrip had already established a strong foothold in the international travel booking market, but it was the domestic market where the most significant growth happened.

Between 2010 and 2015, India’s internet penetration grew from 8% to over 30%, and MakeMyTrip capitalized on this by shifting its focus from desktop to mobile. This move was crucial for the company’s success, as mobile internet users in India skyrocketed to over 600 million by 2021.

Here’s an ad promoting the mobile app with interesting offers:

Then, the MakeMyTrip mobile app in 2012 was a turning point, making travel bookings more accessible for India’s burgeoning middle class. After the launch of the mobile app, MakeMyTrip saw a 70% increase in bookings from mobile devices within just a year.

By 2018, more than 85% of their traffic and over 70% of bookings were coming through the mobile app, which became one of India’s most downloaded travel apps, with over 33 million downloads.

This shift to mobile made bookings more convenient for users and allowed MakeMyTrip to engage with customers more directly through app notifications and personalized offers.

While MakeMyTrip successfully captured the market, it faced a few challenges during this rapid adoption. One issue was the slow refund process for cancellations, especially during peak travel seasons.

Customers often complained about delayed refunds for flight and hotel cancellations, particularly during unforeseen circumstances like natural disasters or airline strikes.

The company addressed this by introducing instant refunds for some bookings, and by 2019, they managed to reduce the average refund processing time by 30%.

Another area for improvement was the customer service experience during high-traffic periods. As the user base grew, so did the volume of queries and complaints, particularly during the holiday season.

In response, MakeMyTrip improved its automated support system and chatbot capabilities, which now handle over 40% of customer inquiries without human intervention.

Results

• In 2023, the company’s total revenue reached $677 million, a sharp increase from $197 million in 2017. The company's revenue from hotels and packages accounted for 58% of its total revenue.

• As of 2022, MakeMyTrip handled over 50 million travel bookings annually, demonstrating its dominance in India’s travel market.

• MakeMyTrip currently holds a 28% market share in India’s online travel industry, making it the largest online travel platform in the country.

• In a 2021 survey, 85% of users rated the platform as excellent for its ease of use and fast booking process.

• The average time taken to complete a booking on the mobile app is less than 3 minutes, a vast improvement from the 15-20 minutes it took in the early 2000s.

• By 2021, they reduced the average refund time from 10 days to 72 hours for most bookings, and the user base has expanded from 6 million active users in 2015 to over 44 million in 2023.

Conclusion

MakeMyTrip’s story shows the power of customer-centric innovation, mobile-first plans, and continuous technological advancement. They have become a leader in the online travel industry by focusing on personalized experiences, simplifying processes, and adapting to market trends.