iXiGo has launched bus booking enabling search, comparison and booking of bus tickets 
from multiple bus operators and bus booking sites in India.
iXiGo’s, in partnership with Ticketvala, redBus and TicketGoose aggregates private bus operators spread over 500 towns and across 2300 routes.
The indian travel/OTA industry is under a serious threat as commission per ticket, after falling from 10% to 5% is now heading towards 0% (starting October).
Most of the OTAs have resorted to bus bookings and are waiting for railways to open up the train booking APIs to expand into the travel footprints.
Also, Cleartrip is reported to have sacked 42 employees (15%) and Stuart Crighton, one of the cofounders has taken over the CEO role from Sandeep Murthy.
More on Indian OTA Industry
- 2,860 International Air Transport Association (IATA) affiliated agents in India and roughly around 40,000 sub IATA agents purchase tickets from IATA affiliated agents
- 90% of booking is done via the agents.
- Around 35,000 agents and sub-agents will be forced to shut shop, because of commission erosion.
Declining Travel Industry
- Domestic air travel has registered a steep fall of about 40% during the last one year
- Passenger demand growth fell to 3.8%,
- Passenger load factors too dropped to 77.6% [ET]
Expect more consolidation in this space.
The link you have provided to the Cleartrip post on VCCircle is not working dude. Where is Sandeep Murthy headed off to now?
Sandeep Murthy has moved to become the Chairman
I read somewhere that cleartrip is going to break even by this year end or early next year and they are targeting around 1500 crore turnover by 2010, then why this layoffs??? Certainly Airline Industry is going through the turmoil at present which affecting OTAs in booking the airline tickets.
But it seems like this turmoil is not stopping anyone to get the space in Indian Travel industry as here is one more travel meta search engine i visited recently… http://www.comparesasta.com
It will be interested to see who will survive…
Hi folks,
Can anyone give me a rough estimate of what percent commission do online bus booking guys like ticketvala, red bus etc. make??
Hello Raj
Online bus booking is just opposite of offline, where if you go to a offline agent to get a bus ticket if he charges 250/- 220/- will be given to bus operator and the remaining 30/- will be as his commission
The commission rates will vary upon the routes which are busy mostly and also on festival seasons. in normal days offline agents charge minimum 30/- per ticket
The same online travel sites like redbus, ticketvala and others will charge but the amount will be little bit high like min commission rate will be some where around 50 to 70 or nearly in between
people book ticket online and money will be transfered from person bank account to ticketvala or redbus bank account, and where by the end of day, these online bus people will pay the ticket rate to the operator and they keep the commission rate with them
so as online means any person world wide can book bus tickets in india, so depending upon the traffic and online bookings these online bus companies earn