ixigo Smart Lock launched on 17 September 2026, an agentic AI feature that watches eligible flight fares 24×7 in the background against a traveller’s target budget, for a fee starting at Rs 99.

The traveller enters a destination, dates and a budget. When the agent finds a fare inside that budget it locks the price for four hours and sends a notification. The feature is limited to domestic one-way flights in India for now. If no fare turns up inside the budget, the full fee is credited to the traveller’s ixigo money account, redeemable on future flight, hotel and bus bookings. “With Smart Lock, we are shifting that effort from the traveller to AI agents. Users can simply tell us where they want to go, when they want to travel and how much they are comfortable spending,” said Rajnish Kumar, co-founder and group co-CEO.

Every OTA and airline is piloting agentic AI travel booking this year. Most are starting with the agent. ixigo started with the pieces underneath it. Here are the five things it did that others did not.

1. It sold the habit first, at Rs 149

Smart Lock is the second paid price product on the app, not the first. ixigo’s Price Lock starts at Rs 149, holds a fare for anywhere from four hours to 14 days, absorbs fare increases up to Rs 4,000 per traveller on domestic routes and Rs 8,000 on international, and passes on any drop in price. The Price Lock terms are plain: it is “a price guarantee and not a seat guarantee”. It works per traveller, needs a logged-in user, asks for no passenger names until the final booking, and refunds the fee if seats sell out before the booking is completed. A customer who has paid Rs 149 to hold a fare already understands what an agent that finds and holds one is selling.

2. It priced Smart Lock below the habit, at Rs 99

Smart Lock starts at Rs 99, Rs 50 under Price Lock, and it does less: a four-hour hold rather than up to 14 days, on domestic one-way flights only. The narrow scope is the point. The agent watches a small, well-understood pool of fares, the promise fits in one sentence, and the price sits below the product the customer already knows. Operators who launch an agent at a premium, with a wide remit, are asking the customer to pay more for something less proven.

3. It made failure refundable, into ixigo money

If the agent cannot find a flight inside the budget, the full fee comes back as ixigo money, which the traveller can spend on flights, hotels and buses on the app. Price Lock set the pattern: the fee is refunded if seats sell out before booking. The agent inherits a promise the customer has already seen honoured, and the refund stays inside the app rather than going back to a card. A failed search becomes a credit toward the next booking.

4. It built the funnel on trains and buses, with a 63% share

ixigo holds a 63% OTA market share in trains. Bus GTV grew 39% year on year in Q1 FY27. Hotels delivered 0.5 million heads on beds in the quarter after a 54.66% majority stake in Brevistay and 10,000 plus direct property contracts across 700 towns, according to the company’s Q1 FY27 release. The flight agent does not have to buy its audience. It sits in an app that travellers open for a train or a bus, and the ixigo money refund routes a failed flight search back into those same categories.

5. It shipped from a book that made money, PAT up 81%

Q1 FY27 gross transaction value was Rs 5,524.33 crore, up 19%. Revenue from operations was Rs 356.75 crore, up 13%. Profit after tax was Rs 34.24 crore, up 81%, and EBITDA was Rs 53.52 crore, up 65%, with adjusted EBITDA at Rs 29.24 crore. A Rs 99 agent that refunds itself when it fails is a small bet for a company at those numbers. The agent is an add-on to a business that already works, not the plan to make one work.

Key takeaway

The one thing to copy is the order. ixigo sold a paid, refundable, manual version of the promise for years before it let software make the promise on the traveller’s behalf, and then priced the agent below it. Any hotel, airline or OTA with a booking funnel can do the same: put a price on the hold, make failure refundable in your own currency, then automate the search. We expect the operators that start with the agent instead to spend the next year teaching customers what it is for.

The post ixigo Smart Lock: 5 things built years before the Rs 99 fare agent appeared first on TravHQ.

In its latest episode of ‘Stories Of The Newhood’, MensXP talks to the men behind IXIGO. The video has interesting nuggets about the company’s journey. They wrote a small script to find out a short sweet name for the company IXIGO and later figured out that the name also means I Explore, I Go.

The company is doing 200mn+ PNR status checks every month to predict the confirmation of a waitlisted ticket. IXIGO also predicts whether airfare prices will go down or up.

Watch the video below to learn more about the company’s story

The post The IXIGO Story: From IIT Kanpur to being in South of France to building India’s largest mobile travel marketplace appeared first on TravHQ.

The onset of 1st April every year presents an opportunity for brands to ‘trick’ their consumers with generous doses of mischief and pranks through humorous and almost-believable campaigns. Brands capitalize on the event with many things – ranging from fake products and offers, to contests and basically anything that would help them with engagement.

This year was no different, as many brands jumped into the fray with some unique and clever deceptions. We bring to you a list of all the major April Fools Day campaigns from travel brands on social media this year.

Ixigo’s special ‘kavach’

Ixigo is one company that has never shied away from making a fool out of consumers on this special occasion. Over the years, they have mastered the art of deception and this year, they went a step ahead by announcing the launch of a new smart lock for travellers called Ixigo Kavach. Apparently, this smart lock automatically gave thieves electric shocks when pilfered bags were taken more than 5 meters away from their owners.

The brand didn’t wait for April 1 to announce the campaign, and instead tweeted the launch on March 29, making it all the more believable. While most people were smart to catch on to the fact that this might be a joke, the brand was lauded for its hilarious efforts.

Ola’s fake news

Ola has had some of the most elaborate pranks. In 2015, it claimed to launch a helicopter service called Ola Air, while in 2016 it had said it had launched Ola Rooms, a concept through which people could sleep in cabs. This year, Ola announced the launch of Ola News Network, or ONN, which it called India’s fastest news-on-the-go. It said ONN would utilize Ola’s driver partner network to report news, and that its drivers would double up as news reporters.

Ola was consistent with its posts on social media regarding the launch and people were quite happy to finally see some real on-ground reportage. Alas, it wasn’t to be.

Oyo’s cryptic moves

Hospitality giant Oyo went all out with the blockchain theme by announcing the launch of its very own cryptocurrency called Oyo Smart Coin, which would be used by its vendors, hotels and customers to seamlessly conduct transactions among themselves. Oyo even had a dedicated site and whitepaper for Oyo Smart Coin. They even had a registration forum with people lining up to get their hands on the latest currency. Kudos to the efforts at making the prank so elaborate and detailed.

Zoomcar’s home-like caravans

Zoomcar was yet another company that tricked people into believing that they had started rentals of caravan-like vehicles. With a promotional video and a hashtag #Zoomcaravan, the brand urged people to try out its latest offering and take the caravan around places, sleep in forests or the foothills of mountains, banks of lakes or unending tea gardens. One glance at the replies and it is evident that people fell for the ruse, with most consumers asking Zoomcar for details and showing excitement about the launch.

Emirates’ sky views

This prank from Emirates was as big and elaborate as anyone would rightly expect from the Middle-Eastern airline. They announced a new ‘SkyLounge’ – part of a plane where the entire cabin is windows. The airline posted renderings of the lounge to show how it would look like from inside and outside.

The announcement was no more than just a prank and even came with a punchline: the SkyLounge will be introduced on the “Boeing 777X fleet.” Emirates is known to share pranks on April 1st. Even last year, the airline pranked internet users with its life-changing plan to launch the world’s first triple-decker that will feature a swimming pool, game room, gym and a park.

Also read: These travel brands are raising the bar for April Fool’s Day pranks.

The post April Fool’s Day 2018: How top travel brands fooled the world appeared first on TravHQ.

Over the past decade, mobile has revolutionized the travel industry and is reshaping how every travel organization interacts with its travellers. However, there are bigger changes looming on the horizon, with the emergence of voice search, artificial intelligence and conversational messaging. Combined together, these technologies are reshaping the future of travel, and most importantly, travel agents.

Travel-meta search engine ixigo recently unveiled TARA (Travel Assistant and Recommendation Agent), a 100% AI-driven travel assistant for flights. She takes care of all your flight-related needs across discovery, research, planning, booking and trip management. TARA is exactly like the travel agent of the past, except that she responds instantly and is available 24×7. She has all flight-related information and deals at her fingertips, she is unbiased and knows your preferences, and she doesn’t sleep at night. Her aim is to make sure you simply focus on enjoying your trip. TARA also won the runner’s up award at the Phocuswright Conference this year.

Omniscient digital assistants, from Google Trips to Lola, are set to change the dynamics of travel. New apps are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to go beyond just helping travellers plan trips, to learning their preferences and even suggesting personalized itineraries. This is great news for consumers, who are going to benefit immensely in terms of convenience, but will it mean bad news for travel agents who are likely to lose traffic to these new assistants?

Ixigo co-founder and CTO Rajnish Kumar at the Phocuswright Conference 2017

Digital travel assistants provide users a single point of contact through which they can book trips, thus vastly narrowing down options, and hassles of connecting with different companies for their travel getaway. For instance, Expedia has partnered with Amazon to offer its services through the Alexa digital assistant, who allows users to book flights or call a cab through Amazon Echo. These tools allow travellers to make requests using more intuitive language and questions; a much more seamless experience than calling or getting on the website.

Moreover, digital assistants cover the entire travel experience. So instead of hotels or airlines sending individual notifications, these apps bring everything together and break the silo, thus bringing them closer to the one-point contact travel experience that passengers expect. Digitization has given them this choice in a big way.

Ixigo’s digital travel assistant TARA

For travel agents, these interfaces represent both a great opportunity and a threat. These conversational apps provide a new tool to resolve simple customer problems, so they can focus on more complicated requests. While they are perfect for today’s mobile environment, they will also require more back-end work to educate customers and provide the right responses.

Whether agents like it or not, consumer behavior will continue to change. The only question that remains is how should they adapt. The executives who manage to get it right will stand to profit the most. Using these AI softwares and platforms, and optimizing for their virtual assistants could be one solution. However, if they can provide a great user experience, they stand a strong chance of competing regardless of how it’s delivered.

Whatever the interaction model that travel agents choose, typing in a mobile web-browser is definitely not going to make the cut in a mobile-first future.

The post IXIGO’s TARA unleashes a new war versus travel agents – who will survive? appeared first on TravHQ.

There is no denying the fact that travel is hard to sell. Selling something intangible takes a lot of effort and usually there is a long way from inspiration to conversion. This is exactly why it is important to leave an impression that lasts and with the changing content consumption patterns, video is emerging to be a popular medium on social platforms.

Aashish Chopra, Head-Content Marketing at ixigo

During the recently concluded Travel Marketing Summit by TiE Delhi, social media marketing was the central topic. However, young startups often don’t have the budgets to spend on making high quality videos or getting onboard a creative agency to do so. Pradeep Chopra, CEO, Digital Vidya, Navneet Kaushal, CEO, PageTraffic and Aashish Chopra, Head-Content Marketing at ixigo engaged in a discussion on what are some of the best ways to get noticed without spending big. Here is what they had to share:

Think mobile

While there would still be a significant number of people who are booking on desktop, the inspiration to travel comes on mobile. New internet users in smaller cities usually have low end devices. Facebook and WhatsApp are their entry point to the internet world and you should explore the possibility of connecting with your customers there.

Navneet Kaushal, CEO, PageTraffic

It is also important to tailor your content to mobile devices. Brands still make the mistake of using smaller fonts that aren’t legible. Even for videos, marketers should be looking at square format as portrait video is a trend catching up momentum.

Dig into the options

During the early days, it is often better to target a small number of customers than a bigger set of customers who might not be the perfect fit. With the massive volume of consumer data they have, social media platforms and search engines offer very precise targeting options which you should leverage. The right customers will speak for your brand and people trust something coming from their friends more than they would trust an ad. Even beyond the ads, work hard to over-deliver on your promise to build this set of loyal customers who will be your advocates.

Pradeep Chopra, CEO, Digital Vidya

Distribution is the key

While creating the content, account for how you will distribute it. Think of why someone would want to share it and try to induce elements that would drive shares. Keep your audience in mind and build distribution channels accordingly. If you videos are being shared on Facebook, engage with communities there and give them more of your content over time.

Experiment

Don’t take the beaten path. To stand out, you will have to experiment with a dozen things, look at the data, iterate and then run a new set of experiments to see what works. Taking the usual route would never help you go viral, experimenting with new things just might. Look at other markets to see what works and try to create content that connects through emotion or humour

Find the right people

Instead of spending on the costliest of resources, look around for the resources at your disposal and make things work. Set up the team with people who have the passion to do big things, put trust in young talent and you might achieve great results at a fraction of the cost.

Sign up for our newsletter below to stay updated on our upcoming stories and all the future events.

The post Marketing experts share how to promote your travel startup without burning through a pile of cash appeared first on TravHQ.

ixigo launched its very own chrome extension called ixigo inspire. This lets the traveller scroll through inspiring places and instantly compares deals online across various travel sites.

The extension opens up with each new Google Chrome tab with a stunning background photo of an inspiring destination from around the world. Apart from this, the add-on helps you find the cheapest travel deals on a real-time basis no matter on whichever website you’re on.

The extension also enhances traveller’s experience by collating features like PNR lookups and PNR confirmation predictions from ixigo’s website.  It behaves to manage all your solutions with respect to travel bookings.

The Twitter has raved about the extension all over and it has received all positive feedbacks.  In addition to all its existing features, the plugin also allows you to refer and earn cash-back coupons that can be used on the ixigo travel app.

ixigo has been van guarding the technological front for some time now. Its claims to hail a cab without the presence of internet or GPS connection. ixigo uses a combination of intelligence about the user’s location through existing PNR (passenger name record) confirmations on a user’s phone and SMSes for when the internet connection doesn’t work to book a cab for the user. It had also launched its app discovery platform for train travellers, which was highly beneficial for brands so that they can reach out to them to discover apps and deals relevantly.

ixigo have started its intercity cab service as well which comes as a sense of tapping the potential inter-city market as a measure to organise an utterly chaotic segment.

We have seen a lot of development from ixigo in the first quarter and it’s slaying so far. We are excited about its future developments.

The post ixigo’s updated Chrome extension ‘inspire’ is yet another star on their bandwagon appeared first on TravHQ.

If you have been following the viral video feats of travel search engine, ixigo, the name Aashish Chopra doesn’t need a second introduction. Be it getting recognised for the most shared brand post on Facebook in Asia or winning the DMAi Content Marketer Of The Year Award, he has done it all.

We recently spoke to him on the opportunities for content marketers and the changing face of Digital India. Here’s a short video from our conversation with Aashish Chopra. To learn more about him, visit his personal website http://www.aashishchopra.com/.

The post Video: Aashish Chopra from ixigo on Digital India & Content Marketing Opportunities appeared first on TravHQ.

App discovery platforms are making your “zombie app” appear out of the thin air from the play store and placing them on the vanguard. The kind of strategies that are employed to market the app are beyond imagination. Given that we are blowing sums of money on making them visible, app discovery platforms are doing their homework well that way.

Le Travenues Technology Pvt. Ltd which runs ixigo.com launched its app discovery platform for Indian train travellers yesterday. Climbing onto the bandwagon were 20 brands including Amazon, Flipkart and Paytm who signed up for discovery app platform to market their apps and deal to Indian train travellers. It helps in reaching out to travellers contextually and helping them find relevant information and deals.

It is available on Android. ixigo said in a statement.

“Over 70 lakh users in India have installed the ixigo trains app, generating a monthly active user base of close to 18 lakh, and a daily active user base of over 3 lakh, spread across 200-plus locations in India,”

ixigo train app helps the travellers to find train routes, check train running status, get coach position, platform numbers, real-time seat availability. The brand also launched instant booking facility-“ixibook”, and has partnered with online travel agency Cleartrip Pvt.Ltd and OYO Rooms (Oravel Stays Pvt.Ltd) as its launch associate for flights and hotels, respectively.

TravelKhana thinks the app is a relevant marketing channel for reaching out to the engaged audience. Raghav Gupta, Country Head, BlaBlaCar feels that the app is going to propel the brand’s strategy of ride-sharing to the travellers destination as an alternative.

TripAdvisor has been forced to incorporate direct bookings and offer reviews as the stiff competition from online travel agencies and disruptive travel start-ups.

Aloke Bajpai said,

“Our goal is to help travellers discover high quality apps contextually. Also, for partners, it’s a great marketing channel with amazing targeting possibilities. They are helping our travellers recharge on the go, book a meal for their journey, and to discover content, services and products that they may want to order during, before or after their journey. We are now evaluating more partnerships in the news, music and entertainment categories,”

Launched in 2007 in Gurgaon by Bajpai and Rajnish Kumar, ixigo aggregates real-time travel information, prices, and availability for flights, trains, buses, cabs, hotels, packages and destinations. ixigo’s investors include SAIF Partners, MakeMyTrip and Micromax Informatics Ltd.

The post Train travel in India gets nailed by ixigo’s app discovery platform appeared first on TravHQ.

Today is exactly the kind of day when we take everything with a pinch of salt. You can’t blame us. Over the years, some of the biggest brands have been scaling up their pranks and tech companies often take the lead. The fast paced tech industry has surprised us with seemingly impossible results in the past and they try to pass off impossible ideas as real today. Here are some of our favourite pranks that travel brands tried to pull this year:

1- Ola Rooms

No, the transportation company isn’t planning to come up with a budget hotel chain, at least not yet. However they did offer budget accommodation this April Fool’s Day with Ola Rooms. The idea was that you can order your hotel room on the go for INR 249 per night. Staffed with a front desk manager, housekeeping attendant and room service attendant rolled into the driver, Ola Rooms offer dining with options spread across the whole city. For the added theatricals, they even added the option in their mobile app and got some influencers on Twitter to appreciate the Ola Rooms experience.

@Olacabs beautiful morning view after night out with #olaRooms . It was an amazing stay! pic.twitter.com/lyOPNFe85F

— Balagopal (@balagopalks) April 1, 2016

2- ixigo coolie

Porters or coolies are a common sight on railway station in India and this April Fool’s day, ixigo announced a new app that would allow travellers to easily book a coolie. With features like ETA, coolie type, price guide and GPS tracking, the app would save you from the hassle of dealing with unreliable porters. This was accompanied by a new page on their website with the download link for Android and iOS apps.

2- 8 bit KAYAK

KAYAK is the reason this story is going live hours later than originally should have. The travel search engine didn’t pull a prank but certainly delayed many bookings. Their home page adopted an 8 bit videogame style theme today and offered some excellent arcade games from back in the day. Some music from the same decade was also thrown into the mix. Topping that up were the KAYAK logos redone to resemble Nintendo and SEGA logos. You can enjoy the games here.

4- Virgin Australia Kids Class

Judging by the responses on Facebook, a large number of travellers really wanted this one to be true. A 100% adult free cabin for the junior flyers. Seats that they can kick on the back, edible items in cabin, teddy bears to choose from a menu and soap bubbles on demand were some of the ‘key features’ highlighted in the video. Some really disappointed responses were received when Virgin Australia announced it to be a prank.

5- Skyscanner’s airport news

Along with inspirational content, Skyscanner India often uses its social media accounts to share travel news & information. Today the flight search engine shared an update that the immensely popular marble mausoleum, Taj Mahal will get its own airport and runway soon. To make it more convincing, they also published a detailed story on their website which included specifics of the upcoming ‘project’. However at the end of the story, they did add a reminder of the date.

6- Contiki’s free virtual travel

With the increasing number of apps offering excellent virtual reality travel experiences, this one was pretty convincing. Contiki announced Virtually Unlimited, a virtual reality experience that would allow travellers to get the high without the heavy investment on international trips. However the hilarious video they released along with the announcement had enough evidences to suggest that it was indeed an April Fool’s Day joke.

What was your favourite April Fool’s Day joke by a travel brand this year? Do share with us

The post From Coolie Finder to Cab Rooms, here are some of the coolest pranks played by travel brands on April Fool’s Day appeared first on TravHQ.

The FICCI auditorium witnessed the Travel and Hospitality Tech Conclave 2016 fold with a huge round of applause from the leaders and participating organizations from the travel and technology sector. The two-day event saw some stirring discussions and prime concerns being debated upon. The panel discussion on the nuances of Content Marketing was exhilarating and the mojos had some key points to give away.

The panel included Sesh Seshadri, Director at Lonely Planet India; Aashish Chopra, Head Content Marketing at ixigo; Bhawna Grover, Head of Content at Goibibo and Dolly Bhasin, MD, SPH Consultancy & Eservices Pvt. Ltd. They gave insights on how content can be leveraged to promote brand name in the travel sector.

1-The art of storytelling

From a traveller’s perspective, everything comes down to destination. If the destination is worth it, he would undergo umpteen amounts of discomfort to get there. Similarly, if the content narrates the reality; the stark truth, so much so that if the experience gathered by just reading the content is enough an inspiration to pack your bags, then the mission has been accomplished.

Trying to sell the product isn’t the way to go. Curated content is a destination for the traveller. If they don’t relate to the brand, they would not opt it out. Selling dreams, experiences and adventures should be the core focus of the travel brands. And only good deliverable content could make it happen.

2-Attention of the consumer is all you have

Content marketing is a growth hack in this age. Travel brands should experiment and go beyond the usual marketing strategy. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are huge and chaotic. Driving the right content and the traction that it should attract seems like an uphill task on these social media platforms. However, if one captures the attention of the consumer, some hope of getting that content through him looks certain.

Share-worthy content is the prime key rather than consumable content in driving campaigns forward. Real-time engagement with contextual content can easily grab the eyeballs of users on social media and do wonders for brands. Brands need to keep on experimenting with the tonality, theme and format of the content to connect with their consumers. Though in some instances like with videos, the ratio of failures would be on a higher side, with only 2 out of 10 videos getting valuable returns to a travel brand.

3-The power of user generated content

The content shouldn’t be hammered. Let users be the end provider of the content because that’s where we want the impact to happen. And by this travel brands can deliver engaging content that creates likeability and brand image. The visual content drives maximum amount of traction in the hospitality sector.

Images are very powerful sources to draw attention. The contributed images play a major role here because that’s how the reality is perceived. Hence, meta search engines like Tripadvisor and GoIbibo let users contribute visually curated content. The way forward is to get the community to participate.

4-The emerging trends on new platforms

The right kind of content gets the right kind of traction on a right platform. That being said, the social media has expanded its reach to the millennial. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are not the sole propagating areas and travel brands should go beyond just them. The new emerging platforms that are unheard of as means to expand the brands reach could include Wikipedia and TED.

TED is a rather interactive platform where innovation meets expansion. A particular product or a campaign could draw n-number of views on TED given its marketing strategy focuses on the innovation and experience.

5-Popular formats to be applied

The marketers talked about how not just purist content should be the only focus in driving traveller’s imagination. They talked how infographics, GIFs and vine videos could provide engaging content as they drew the attention of the viewer. Thumbnail image in a video plays a great role in catching the attention of a user. Square video formats have to be propelled forward in an m-commerce platform dominated space if the brands want the content to go viral. Being said this; the attention span in a chaotic space is very less which lays emphasis on streaming captivating content in first 2-3 seconds. Else, the marketer loses the viewer.

We will be coming up with updates of interesting discussions that took place at FICCI Conclave. Stay tuned!

The post “Content Marketing is a growth hack at ixigo”- Aashish Chopra, Head Content Marketing, ixigo appeared first on TravHQ.