Skyscanner, the global travel search engine have announced that travellers will be able to search for hotels and car hire from the existing flights app. Planning travel will now be super easy with flights, hotels and car hire searches all addressed in one app.
With growing smart phone penetration and social media revolution, Indian travellers are increasingly logging onto the internet to plan their vacations. According to the IAMAI-IMRB [Internet and Mobile Association of India-Indian Market Research Bureau], online travel accounts for 61% of Indian ecommerce and the online travel industry is expected grow at around 40% to reach Rs 122,815 crore by end of 2016.
The trend for both searching and booking travel on mobile has accelerated dramatically in recent years, with the Skyscanner apps having been downloaded over 40 million times worldwide. 45% of all Skyscanner searches in India are now made using a mobile device*, while the last year alone has seen a 24% increase in people booking via smartphones in India**.
In an effort to make searching and booking travel even easier, the free Skyscanner app [compatible with both iOS and Android devices] will continue to deliver personalized, relevant and inspirational travel information, in addition to exciting brand new features designed to save travellers time and money.
New SkyScanner features to save money
A new Explore Top Deals section provides easy to navigate deals including:
- Summer holiday deals – For those on the hunt for sunshine this summer, find all the best options per month from your chosen airport
- City breaks – Travellers can find the cheapest options for a last minute weekend city break with this new feature
- Everywhere – For those with set travel dates yet totally flexible on destination, challenge Everywhere to find the top deals from your chosen airport
- Timeline view – This view allows travellers who have searched for a specific destination in the Explore Top Deals section the chance to easily find the best flight options for the near future
New SkyScanner features to save time
The Quick Search section also has a number of new and refined features, including:
- Hotels and car search sync – Hotels and car hire are now automatically synchronized with flights search so travellers no longer have to re-input check in times, destinations, pick up locations, etc
- Revamped hotels booking view – Quick snapshots of all the key information (images, reviews, price) for hotel results with the revamped hotels booking view
- Instant flight search – Search results are instantly refreshed, and as new parameters are set the search automatically starts in the background so no waiting for new results to load and as new parameters are set the search automatically starts in the background so no waiting for new results to load
- Ratings – To help travellers to pick the best flights for them quickly and easily, search results can be ordered by price, duration or ‘rating’ – the latter of which takes into account the price, number of stops and duration and is reflected in a colour coded smiling/frowning face and score out of 10
Kavitha Gnanamurthy, Senior Marketing Manager, Skyscanner said
We at Skyscanner understand the demands of the evolved traveller, providing them with the opportunity to plan a cost effective trip. With our unified app, we become the perfect travel partner to design an easy and smart trip, incorporating all of ones travel needs under one roof.
Balint Orosz, Head of App Product, from Skyscanner said
At Skyscanner we believe it’s important to continue to innovate and develop technology as the needs of our customers evolve. We’ve incorporated all of the learnings and user feedback from our standalone hotels and car hire apps into this new, upgraded offering, making it the ultimate app to serve all your travel needs.
Visit Skyscanner.net/mobile for more information and how to download the Skyscanner app.
About Skyscanner
- Skyscanner is a leading global travel search company providing free search of flights, hotels and car hire.
- Founded in 2003, Skyscanner helps meet the travel planning needs of over 50 million people each month.
- Skyscanner is available in 30 languages.
- Skyscanner’s highly-rated free mobile apps have been downloaded over 40 million times.
- The privately-owned company employs over 700 staff and has ten global offices in Edinburgh, London, Singapore, Beijing, Shenzhen, Miami, Barcelona, Glasgow, Sofia and Budapest. For more information, please visit Skyscanner