Good Morning,
After seeing an upswing in travel and hotel bookings during the end of the year, the online travel aggregators (OTA) and hospitality sector is seeing a significant dip in both domestic and international travel amidst the third COVID-19 wave.
Reservations for international travel have dropped drastically, with industry players estimating the plunge to be close to 60 percent, while domestic travellers have rescheduled plans, leading to a 30 percent decline in bookings.
“Since the emergence of Omicron in India, we have witnessed a drop of around 15 percent in domestic flight bookings. International travel has been affected owing to restrictions implemented across the globe. Despite this new surge, the travel sentiment remains strong, and this can be evidenced by the fact that many travellers are now planning to partake in revenge and leisure travel,” Rikant Pittie, Co-founder of OTA EaseMyTrip, told YS.
Despite the temporary slowdown, most of these players expect a stronger rebound, especially in leisure travel and due to extended work-from-home policies. Industry players are optimistic about recovery in 2022.
The Interview
In 2016, Ujjwal Jain, Founder and CEO of WealthDesk, founded the platform to build a Unified Wealth Interface (UWI) for the asset and wealth management ecosystem on top of broking.
In a conversation with YS, Ujjwal talks about how WealthDesk’s journey started, its curated portfolios WealthBaskets, how it bootstrapped because patient capital was needed to achieve the patient UWI vision, and more.
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In a conversation with the 100X Entrepreneur podcast, he says the best lessons in the segment came from mistakes and missed opportunities. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
Marrying design with tech to build dream homes
Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) startup Design Cafe offers end-to-end solutions for designing homes starting from designing, manufacturing home accessory products to installing them.
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The Design Cafe Space
News & Updates
- Internet entrepreneurs Falguni Nayar and Sanjeev Bikhchandani weighed in on the Ashneer Grover controversy at an event organised by Institutional Investor Advisory Services. Ashneer has been in the spotlight since an audio clip went viral on social media on January 5, in which he is allegedly swearing at an employee of Kotak Mahindra Bank.
Before you go, stay inspired with…
“The travel-tech industry, which democratised travel and made tourism more affordable than ever, will play a monumental role in the post-COVID times.”
— Varun Vagish, Founder of Mountain Trekker
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