Online travel is seeing some interesting news offlate. Right from launching of non flight services to going international to even laying off people due to the travel price hikes and slowdown in the economy. This space is seeing a downturn.

So here are the updates on all thats happening:

Cleartrip lays off 42 people - This news has caused quite a flutter in the online travel space. It was only recently that cleartrip had raised 18 million $ and by the admission of their own CEO this was more money than they required! Some organizational structural changes have also happened where the new CEO is Stuart Crighton who takes over from Sandeep Murthy who is now Chairman. Sandeep was christened the CEO when Cleartrip raised funding from Sherpalo (who was represented by Sandeep in India).

The clear question that arises is that if the most heavily funded travel site is laying off people then this surely is a period of slow growth for the OTA space. (Source - VCCircle)

Zoomtra Goes International - Zoomtra.com the travel meta search engine that competes head on with iXiGo.com has launched itself in the global market with dedicated Singapore-India portal at (http://sg.zoomtra.com/) and very soon plans to expand to other important destinations like US, UK, Canada.

On the reason for choosing singapore Vikas Jawa, Director, Zoomtra.com said “As Singapore is one of the most important hubs for Asia, we are aspiring to cover Pan Asia through this portal,”
The Zoomtra.com (Singapore) is targetted towards the NRI community travelling from Singapore to Indian and will have additional features such as travel guides and resources guide catering to NRI’s/tourists requirements.

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