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How many of us have tried multiple “money-saving hacks,” when it comes to travel bookings, particularly air tickets; right from looking for the cheapest day in the week to even booking flights at 3 a.m., to switching to incognito or deleting cookies, all in the effort to secure the best deals. The answer to this is, most of us. Using this insight, Cleartrip – a Flipkart owner travel company – tied up with Chetan Bhagat, in a recent quirky and humorous campaign which sees Bhagat speaking about his new satirical book, Genius Travel Discount Hacks by a Genius, that explores widely believed yet ineffective travel-saving hacks through exaggerated scenarios and storytelling. Highlighting the futility of these myths, the ad steer readers towards a smarter and simpler approach: redeeming SuperCoins (a reward system earned by shopping on Flipkart and Myntra) on Cleartrip.
Tavleen Bhatia, Director - Chief Marketing and Revenue Officer, Cleartrip says, “There is a cohort of 25 to 30 million customers who actively shop on Flipkart or Myntra and have the loyalty currency called SuperCoins and most people aren’t aware of what they can do with the SuperCoins. Our business objective was to tell these people that there is no destination better than Cleartrip to use your SuperCoins for your travel bookings especially if you're looking for value.”
She continues, “We married our business objective with this deep insight that people look for value when it comes to travel. There's a business problem we have - we give people a guaranteed discount every day, at any time of the day but people are not using it and instead looking around for travel hacks. We found that there is an opportunity to marry this and the team came up with a brilliant idea.”
With this campaign running largely for a closed group of customers – 20 to 25 million customers who have the loyalty currency SuperCoins - and have still not come to Cleartrip, awareness and consideration are the top priority. Bhatia says, “Eventually, over time the key metric is to get more users and increase Cleartrip’s penetration from this cohort which then keeps continuing to increase. We’ve reviewed the metrics on both accounts - consideration uplifts and penetration and we are seeing all the right signs. Even if you look at overall awareness consideration, we see it moving in the right direction in terms of engagement outside the platform. What is very important is the time that people are spending on the platform every time a user comes, how many more sessions the user comes for and ultimately how many of them then further go down into the purchase funnel.”
Bhatia believes that there was nobody better than a bestselling author who could land the message being “India's favourite genius with a point of view on everything.” The idea was clear, to steer customers to Cleartrip and apply their SuperCoins to avail a discount for their travel. Bhatia says, “It's a more interesting and disruptive way of talking about discount and value than just saying there’s a sale and a discount for Rs 1,000.”
A Digital-First Approach
For a digitally native brand talking to digitally native audiences, humour plays a big role and Cleartrip as a brand has increasingly been betting on content, storytelling and humour to engage with customers. Bhatia says, “Disarming humour has always been a part of our DNA. The appetite and receptiveness for advertising is continuously coming down while the consumption of content is at an all-time high. As a brand that aspires to stand for the modern digitally native Indian and also appeal to the next generation, we bend heavily towards content.” Cleartrip has also focused on providing people with travel content through a surrogate marketing channel and has seen “spectacular success” here.
Interestingly Bhatia says that Cleartrip has shied away from influencer marketing the way brands typically use influencers. Bhatia explains, “Our core target group - younger millennials and GenZs – are easily able to tell which are branded content so we try not to do a lot of that. We've tied up with a few influencers to land the message but we largely focus on building our own influencers and are building our own content channel. We will keep consistently building content that consumers really want to see, that entertains and educates them. We feel that this is the right way to do tactical tie-ups with influencers. We will use influencers and celebrities when we do our campaigns and where they can fit the storyline. However, we don't want to do a tie-up and get them to plug Cleartrip in an inconsistent manner.”
Cleartrip is investing more in brand marketing with almost 85% of spends going on digital. Within digital, the spends between product, brand and performance and across different channels of digital, and between advertising and content are evolving.
However, it has used traditional media specifically when it has an innovation. For Cleartrip’s Big Billion Days campaign, the brand took a fresh and humorous take on out-of-home (OOH) advertising which created a lot of buzz. The creative visuals featured relatable scenarios, targeting the everyday frustrations of corporate life — from dealing with a toxic boss, navigating traffic jams, and missing concert tickets, to handling breakups and office politics and provided an appealing, escapist alternative, made possible by Cleartrip’s travel offerings.
Another notable campaign was Cleartrip’s ‘#ortraveloncleartrip’ campaign which won a Silver Media Lion at Cannes. The standout feature was a website called ortraveloncleartrip.com, where users could scan any sale advertisement seen on any page of a newspaper (or elsewhere) to access a travel deal from Cleartrip for the same price. When the page was scanned, offers for domestic and international travel, 3-star hotels, and upscale accommodations appeared.
Cleartrip has also started making the journey towards using Gen AI for making creatives. The company is looking to use Gen AI in more interesting manners and the result is expected to be seen soon on the platform and looking forward Gen AI is expected to be used a lot more in advertising.
Building Awareness & Consideration
In addition to the 20 to 25 million loyal customers, Cleartrip has a two-pronged strategy when it comes to customer acquisition. While Cleartrip targets the affluent consumers in metro and Tier I across the Gen Z, Millennial and Gen X cohorts, it also looks to its parent company to widen its customer base. Bhatia says, “The Flipkart travel category targets consumers in Tier II, and Tier III cities. We are building a bridge where if you to go the SuperCoins page on Flipkart or Myntra you will find a way to get to Cleartrip. Similarly, if you log in to the Cleartrip app, SuperCoins has been integrated here. In terms of marketing, we are going very sharply after this cohort. In fact, this cohort will be our first port of call when it comes to growth and customer acquisition.”
Commenting on Cleartrip’s marketing budget Bhatia says, “Last year, in terms of media spends, we had a 30% increase. This year the intent is to continue to increase the marketing budget further as we have a very ambitious vision for growth and that cannot come without building both awareness and consideration.”
The Flipkart travel category also gives Cleartrip an understanding of consumers’ travel affinities and their state of mind to travel. This then aids Cleartrip o sharpen its CRM and what to show in terms of merchandising and also running targeted offers and interventions.
Looking Ahead
Looking back at the year, Cleartrip has seen growth in newer businesses like hotels while continuing sustained growth in air business. Bhatia notes, “In 2024, we’ve seen growth of around 10% to 12%. We are clearly seeing trends of premiumization with international travel growing faster than domestic. Another big trend among millennials and GenZs is drivable getaways. We are seeing growth in the core businesses, and accelerated growth in international travel and in the shorter vacations and getaways.”
A big focus looking ahead for Cleartrip is the hotels category where it is a relevantly new entrant that has seen growth. A key problem for many customers is finding a hotel that meets expectations. Recognising this gap Cleartrip has introduced a new feature—‘Explore Hotels by Vibe’ which provides curated hotel options based on location, amenities, and AI-summarised guest reviews and allows travellers to choose accommodations based on the overall vibe of their trip. Bhatia says, “We want to be a platform that stands for seamless and intuitive experience, that people can get when they are planning, booking and then actually travelling.”
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