Travel search and booking portal Cleartrip has launched mobile search on their own short code 667744, currently available on Airtel, BPL, Hutch and Reliance.
I tried out a search for a Delhi Bangalore flight for the 17th, and got a list of fares by SMS - the best deals for each airline. Cleartrip has alliances with eight airlines, and to limit the length of the message, they’re restricting results to 8 deals and using airline display codes (example: DC for Air Deccan).
One thing that I found missing is option to search for a flight at a specific time of the day. Hrush Bhatt, Founder & Director, Product and Strategy tells me that while technologically, it’s not too difficult to offer all the information that users want from a search via SMS, there are issues of usability and syntax: for information on only Jet Airways, users could request for ‘Jet’, ‘Jet Airways’ or ‘Jet Airlines’. Even if they have specific syntax, then there are issues of having users remember the syntax for request. There are similar syntactical issues with booking tickets using SMS, and hence, for booking, one needs to log on to Cleartrip When mentioned some initiatives by Cleartrip’s competitors, Bhatt just said - We’re not in the features arms race.
Related:
— Jet Airways And Hutch Launch Mobile Airline Ticketing Service
—Cleartrip Gets $8 Million In Series B From DAG Ventures: Report