Globally, recovery in the travel industry is slowly picking pace, owing to vaccination drives and more awareness around the COVID-19 virus. Travel aggregator EaseMyTrip saw significant growth in its sales in this quarter as compared to the last one, which was devastated by the second COVID-19 wave.
“We managed to do business of around Rs 356 crore, which was the GMV amount, of which the company managed to make a Profit Before Tax (PBT) of about Rs 21 crore,” says Prashant Pitti, Co-founder and Executive Director, EaseMyTrip. He adds the ticket volumes in FY22 are much higher.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the global travel and tourism industry significantly. International travel was the first segment to be grounded to curb the spread of the deadly virus.
There has been a recovery on the radar for most travel organisations with digital transformation and a new set of safety offerings. A series of travel tech companies globally have gone public or are in the process of filing for an IPO this year.
EaseMyTrip went public in March this year and was subscribed by around 159.33 times. Prashant says EaseMyTrip was one of the early travel companies to be listed, post which it has seen a plethora of internet companies heading for an IPO.
Commenting on the company’s growth, the co-founder says, EaseMyTrip has seen a 47 percent annual growth from FY18 to FY21. “We are anticipating at least 70-80 percent jump from FY21 numbers,” he says, on the expected revenue and sales targets for the coming year.
The profitability experienced by EaseMyTrip during the pandemic is an indication of the online travel space growing substantially with new trends. The uncertainty of the lifting of restrictions and reinstating them has led people to take less time in booking for travel.
“The bookings are almost impromptu. A lot of bookings are happening for today, tomorrow, which wasn’t happening before. A lot of bookings are happening for one way, where we used to see a lot of bookings for round trips earlier,” shares Prashant.
He adds that people are opting for longer duration stays, with people now booking hotels for an average of 4.7 days as compared to 3.2 days earlier.
Besides, there is also an increase in the number of bookings for ‘high category’ hotels, which can be attributed to the sanitisation efforts that convinces people of the safety of their stay. While restrictions have eased up, the anticipation of the third wave has been announced prominently by government officials.
Vaccination is expected to reduce the severity of the impact of the virus. The travel industry carefully waits for more clarity on the expected third wave. Apart from this uncertainty, EaseMyTrip prepares for a foreseeable huge uptick in demand for the coming quarters.
