Native-language travel searches rise as tier-2 cities drive 45% of voice queries
ADVERTISEMENT
A growing number of Indian travellers are beginning to search and plan trips using voice, and increasingly in the languages they speak at home, signalling a shift in how travel discovery is evolving online.
New data from MakeMyTrip ’s generative AI trip planning assistant Myra suggests that voice-led travel searches are becoming more conversational, contextual, and linguistically diverse compared to traditional text queries.
The insights are based on more than 20 lakh voice conversations conducted on the platform, which currently facilitates over 50,000 interactions daily.
The difference between how users type and speak their travel intent is already visible. Text searches typically remain short and keyword-driven, usually three to four words, such as “Delhi Mumbai flight” or “Goa hotels cheap.” Voice queries, on the other hand, are far more descriptive. Nearly 23% of voice searches exceed 11 words, compared with just 7% of text queries, as travellers naturally mention details like dates, group size, budgets, or amenities in a single sentence.
Users might say: “Show me affordable hotels in North Goa near the beach with a pool” or “2 adults and one kid, 3 nights from 14 January, budget under ₹15,000 per night.”
Regional languages drive voice adoption
Voice is also expanding travel search beyond English. While English still dominates typed queries, voice searches are significantly more diverse across Indian languages.
In fact, usage ratios show how strongly some languages favour voice over text. For Malayalam, voice queries outnumber text searches by 46:1. The ratio is 36:1 for Tamil and 32:1 for Telugu, indicating that travellers are more comfortable speaking their travel needs rather than typing them in English.
Informational queries — questions about visas, documentation or services — are also far more common on voice. These are 2.7 times higher than on text searches. Meanwhile, date-specific queries such as “26 December to 29 December” or “next Friday to Sunday” appear 3.3 times more frequently on voice, suggesting users find it easier to speak natural timelines than type compressed formats.
Location-based searches form another major share, accounting for 25.1% of voice queries and appearing 1.5 times more often than in text searches, as travellers describe proximity more naturally, using phrases like “near beach” or “walking distance from Golden Temple.”
The platform is also seeing significant traction beyond large metros. More than 45% of Myra’s queries now come from Tier-2 and smaller cities, where language flexibility and conversational search may reduce barriers to online travel planning.
“What we are beginning to see through Myra is encouraging. Voice is starting to give a new set of users, those most comfortable in their own language, a more natural way to search and plan travel,” said Rajesh Magow, co-founder and group CEO of MakeMyTrip. “For someone in Kochi or Coimbatore who thinks in Malayalam or Tamil, being able to simply speak their requirements rather than type them in English changes the experience meaningfully.”
However, he adds that it is still early, but these initial signals point to voice having the potential to make travel planning more inclusive and accessible across India.
The data also hints at how voice could handle more complex travel planning. Premium travellers are increasingly making longer requests that combine multiple constraints, such as star category, amenities, group size and budget, in a single sentence.
While such multi-layered queries still make up a small share of overall searches, they suggest that conversational interfaces could gradually move travel discovery away from short keyword searches toward more natural dialogue.