Indian Online Travel Companies Are Done Just Selling Tickets

Good morning from a country that spent the first week of May doing what it does best: turning election results into a full-contact national conversation.

The dust is still settling after Monday’s state election results in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Assam and then the swearing in ceremonies, though “settling” may be generous. Every airport lounge television in India last week had been trapped in an endless cycle of vote-share graphics, shouting panels, and sometimes strategic silences from party spokespersons pretending they definitely saw this coming.

The election results confirmed one thing the travel sector already knew. India is fragmenting into dozens of different consumer stories happening simultaneously. The same country that gave us helicopter campaigns in Bengal also gave us a huge jump in five-star hotel bookings this summer — they more than doubled.

That’s the headline number from Cleartrip’s PeekABoo summer tracker: five-