Cleartrip.com

Kotler had defined the 4Ps of Marketing. I feel the most basic, and the most important, is the Product. And there is a new 'winner' product on the block. Its Cleartrip.com.

The 'online air ticket booking' space in India was pioneered by MakeMyTrip.com (MMT for convenience). Now, everyone is familiar with MMT. MMT offers good price and reasonably good service, and has no major competitor. It is also expanding its bouquet of services. I was one of the early adopters of MMT, and used to rave about it to many of my friends (blue-eyed b-school boys most of em, and fairly frequent flyers)

But recently i saw an ad for cleartrip, and decided to take a look. I liked what i saw. And the experience of booking thru cleartrip was so good, i will not even consider MMT in the future. The improvements these people have made include a 'clean' interface - very easy to understand and use, with all the info u need, and nothing that annoys. E.g., the fares u see on the first page after search, include taxes etc. This is much better than wat we r used to, at other sites - seeing fares that seem low at first sight, but keep inflating with taxes etc at every step of the booking process. Cleartrip always gives complete results (unlike MMT which often misses results from one/more airline), and the fares they show are actually available (unlike MMT, where u often see a 'Sorry, the fare u selected is no longer available' message).

This is a great Product. Try it! This is also a lesson for marketers - never relax. Especially when it comes to product improvement and innovation