Cleartrip bets big on festive season offering up to 35% discounts on flights, hotels

Cleartrip is preparing for a major push this festive season, banking on its Big Billion Day (BBD) sale to drive demand and expand market share in India’s under-penetrated online travel space.

“Big Billion Day allows us to create unprecedented value for consumers and disrupt an industry that is not usually sale-driven,” said Manjari Singhal, chief growth and business officer. Over the past three editions of BBD, Cleartrip says it has doubled growth year-on-year, and it expects a 5x to 6x spike in traffic this year as the base itself has grown threefold compared to previous years.

For the upcoming BBD, Cleartrip is offering domestic flight tickets starting at ₹999 and international tickets from ₹5999. Hotels are being promoted aggressively as well, with five-star properties available from ₹2999 and four-star stays starting at ₹1099. The company has partnered with top banks to offer up to 35% discounts across flights and hotels during the 10-11 days period. On the airline side, around 40 to 50 major global carriers are contributing to the offer, while child-fly-free deals and free ancillaries are part of the mix.

This comes alongside strategic moves to tap tier 2 and tier 3 cities, where online penetration for hotel bookings is just around 26–27%. Cleartrip has integrated with Flipkart’s platform to simplify travel booking for less tech-savvy customers, leveraging Flipkart’s established trust in smaller markets.

But the push for growth comes at a steep cost, reveal the company's FY24 financials. According to Capitaline data, in FY24, Cleartrip spent ₹988 crore to generate ₹97 crore in revenue. Meanwhile, Cleartrip’s operating revenue has remained under ₹100 crore, while its losses have surged beyond ₹800 crore. The company, two decades in, remains optimistic about its trajectory. “We are on the journey towards profitability. There is no specific date, but we are sequentially improving our bottom line,” Singhal said.

Cleartrip’s ambitions do not include an IPO in the near term. “We are closely attached to Flipkart and will wait for the right moment,” she added.

The company claims to be the second largest in terms of market share within the OTA (online travel agency) space.

Within the B2C mix, air drives about 80% of the company's volumes and hotels drive about 20%.  “Air has been a very stable category for us. While the industry has seen a dip in growth this year - somewhere around mid-single digit - our growth has been 3x-4x of that,” said Gaurav Patwari, vice president – air category.

On the risk front, Patwari pointed to the industry’s sensitivity to geopolitical instability. “Travel is the first place to get badly disrupted in case of geopolitical risks,” he said. He also flagged infrastructure and supply chain issues, such as aircraft delivery delays and the need for new airports, as potential hurdles. Still, Patwari believes the worst is behind. “Oil prices are at all-time lows, and supply chain issues are improving,” he said.

Akhil Malik, head of hotels, highlighted that 2025 has been a breakthrough year for Cleartrip’s hotel segment, which posted triple-digit ROI growth as investments in tech and supply chain added scale, without giving exact figures. 

Cleartrip is also investing heavily in technology, particularly AI, to smoothen customer experience and aid decision-making. From enabling conversational travel planning to surfacing the right hotel or flight options based on customer needs, the AI push is designed to reduce friction and make the platform more intuitive. “Early signs of ROI are visible, but adoption will take time,” Singhal said.

What this really means is that Cleartrip is aggressively investing in discounts, tech, and market expansion to build a broader footprint. The question remains whether this strategy will pay off in terms of sustainable profitability, or whether it is a race to capture market share ahead of competitors.

For now, the company is focused on making this festive season its biggest yet.