About MakeMyTrip
What is MMT? Online platform for users to book flights, buses, trains, hotels and more.
How does MMT earn? Commission and Advertisement fees from service providers.
What industry is MMT in? Online Travel and Tourism.
68 Mn+
MAU
50k Cr
Total Revenue FY23
17.2
Market Size 2024 (USD Bn)
28.4
Market Size 2029 (USD Bn)
10.5%
CAGR
| Segment | Share |
|---|---|
| Flights | 65% |
| Hotels | 25% |
| Buses & Railway | 10% |
- Rise in Disposable income and YOLO trend
- Social Media Influence
- Government initiatives to promote tourism
Objective
As a Growth PM at Make My Trip you need to propose a solution using GenAI that helps travellers to plan their trips/vacations.
Why Should MMT Care About Planning?
What is Travel Planning? A very crucial step in traveler's journey where they visualize and organize how the journey will look like — covering where to go, how to get there, and what to do.
Should MMT care about planning? 100% Yes! MMT's primary revenue comes from the booking funnel which gets converted via planning.
Trip lifecycle: Dream → Plan → Book → Experience → Share.
Better Planning leads to More Bookings, which leads to Higher Revenue as the Business Outcome.
Product Outcomes
Increasing Number of Bookings/Users; Increasing New Users.
Current Trip Planning Landscape
- Curated itineraries for popular destinations
- Agents to help create and book personalized plans
- Helps in discovering places to travel based on season, budget, travellers etc.
How is competition solving for trip planning?
Save Hotels in a list for easy comparison and booking; Save and Book Hotels and Flights with collaborative groups; Chat-GPT integrated chatbot; Curated Packages; Discover new destinations.
Research
Itinerary Creation
Budgeting
Collaboration
Target Segment to Solve for Travel Planning
All Travellers segment breaks down into: Business Travellers, Leisure Travellers, Solo Travellers, and Group Travellers.
Business Travellers: Their trips are mostly pre-planned and booked by corporates.
Segment Catered by: Simplified logistics with lesser variables and flexibility to plan.
Why choose Group Travellers?
They face complex challenges in trip planning, solving them can create higher satisfaction and loyalty. Big opportunity to tackle. Potential Revenue and User Base Increase. Group Travellers represent a significant and growing segment with high overall spend.
- Challenges in collaborating to finalize the plan for the trip
- Creating personalized itineraries
- Difficulty finalizing destinations based on available stay, commute and costs
- Budget and Splitting Issues
Research
User Research
A user survey was conducted with 53 people, and 1:1 interviews captured group travel stories of 7 people.
76%
Millennials and Gen Z
80%
Use Online Platforms to book tickets
58%
Takes 2-4 trips each year
85%
Likes to travel with group of friends/family
“I check itineraries from agencies and then plan my own.”
“If I don't plan it myself, I don't feel that excited about the trip.”
“It's so difficult to update the group about the plan and get them on the same page.”
“I get lost in WhatsApp chats while planning with my friends.”
“Once a friend who has all the Bookings lost her phone on the trip and then it was a mess.”
“Careful Planning is good but best moments are spontaneous.”
Trip Planning Personalities:
36%
Likes to plan all the details
52%
Plans but go with the flow
12%
Princess Travelers
Pain Points while Planning:
52%
Creating Personalized Itinerary
34%
Budget Planning
38%
Comparing price for destinations
41%
Selecting Hotels and Commute
- 60% find it difficult to get everyone on the same page
- 65% find it difficult to decide dates, hotel and commute based on everyone's preferences
- 50% feel lost in endless discussions
Secondary Research
71% Indians prefer planning their holiday trips independently. 57% Indians prefer a planned Itinerary while travelling. No single platform available for travellers to collaborate and book tickets. “Planning a trip provides a mini-mental vacation each time we sit down to think about it.”
- Usually, one of the things out of place/date/type of trip is decided before starting the trip planning
- People don't have a step-by-step process of planning their travel
- A basic loose itinerary is liked by many
- People do not hate this planning as they want to peacefully enjoy and not miss things
- People are moving towards slow vacations at one destination than a hectic vacation
User Journey is not actually linear while planning but pain points remain same.
Aisha's Trip Planning Journey — Personas
- AI
Aisha
Primary Persona · Group Trip Planner · Organized · Passionate
“I don't plan it to make it perfect, I plan it make it smooth!.”
Goals
- Streamline the planning process to save time and effort
- Ability to share updated itinerary with the group
- Enjoy a hassle-free trip
Pain points
- Finds it hard to keep a track of all information
- Finalizing different aspects of the trip with her friends
- Too many applications to plan from
- VI
Vicky
Secondary Persona · Trip Member · Easy-Going · Indecisive
“I don't mind anything; I just love travelling with my friends”
Goals
- Enjoy time with friends without the hassle of planning
- Experience new things out of his comfort zone
Pain points
- Not realizing what he is getting into until it's too late
- Getting lost in endless WhatsApp conversations
Research Places
Aisha's Trip Planning Journey
- Search Places and Attractions
- Discuss group's vibe for the trip
- Emotion: Excited to plan and go to the trip; finally getting a break from work and life
- MMT Solution: Search Stay, Finalize Stay
Finalizing Stay
- Search Stays based on group's budget across platforms
- Shares liked stays with the group
- Finalize Stay
- Emotion: Likes the stays; finds it difficult to keep a track all the links and hotels likes by the group
- MMT Solution: All Commutes, Finalize
Finalizing Commute
- Search commute to get to the destination
- Finalize commute
- Emotion: Wishes if she would have booked the flights and buses earlier for cheaper rates
Finalizing Itinerary
- Document a plan for the trip
- Share with the group, discuss any changes or additions
- Save places and activities
- Emotion: Likes creating the itinerary; struggles to add things manually; difficult to collaborate with group
- MMT Solution: Customized Itinerary creation
Make Bookings
- Respective group members make bookings and update everyone
- Keeps a track of who paid for what
- Emotion: Excited to finally make the bookings; difficult to share all bookings and keep a track of them with group
- MMT Solution: Book Group ticket sharing
What Does Seem Like the TRUE PROBLEM?
Problem Statement
Group travellers are facing difficulties in creating personalized itineraries.
Why? Because they are not efficiently able to collaborate and decide.
Why? Because there are too many things and factors (stay, commute, budget, date etc.)
Why? Because there is no single tool available for them to consolidate these and plan.
Why do they even need itinerary?
Want to minimize challenges on the trip. Do not want to end up wasting time figuring things out on the trip. Do not want to feel lost in a new city and end up missing good places.
Is This a Real Problem?
- 52% people struggle to create an itinerary
- 60% people find it difficult to get on the same page with the group
- People have to currently use 7+ applications to plan their trips which is resulting into collaboration issues
- 57% Indians prefer a planned Itinerary while travelling
- New companies are emerging in the global market to solve this problem such as TripIt, Kayak etc.
Value Generated by Solving This Problem
For Group Travellers: Enhanced Collaboration, Time Savings, Personalized Itinerary, Reduced Stress on trips. For MakeMyTrip: Increased Users from group pull, Increased Conversion, Lesser Agents to customize Itinerary, Reduced Costs, Better Community Building on the platform, Increased Trust with MMT.
Why should we solve it now?
Market Dynamics and Consumer Trends: Increased demand for group travellers as people look to reconnect more with friends and family; Increased demand for personalization; Competitors such as Expedia and other new players have started solving for this problem.
Proposed Solution
Ways to Solve This Problem
How can MMT help group travellers efficiently collaborate to create personalized itinerary?
AI Quiz My Trip Planner
A tool where users take a quiz to generate itinerary and then collaborate to finalize plans.
Smart Group Trip Planner
Users can save hotels, commutes etc. they like and vote on items to finalize and create itinerary by self or using AI.
“The Major difference is that in Sol 1 itinerary is created directly using AI based on preferences by user whereas in Sol 2 user explores the place, stay etc. and itinerary is created based on that.”
| Factor | AI Quiz My Trip Planner | Smart Group Trip Planner |
|---|---|---|
| Impact (I) | Medium — Lesser user pull because of pre created itinerary | High — More user pull due to selection with group |
| Confidence (C) | High — Exact user pain point solved | High — Exact user pain point solved |
| Usability Risk (U) | Low — Easy to fill form | Medium — User needs to select and finalize |
| Value Risk (V) | Medium — AI can give generic suggestions which might not feel valuable | Low — Users will have the ability to personalize their itinerary and get help from AI as well to optimize their trip |
| Business Risk (B) | Medium — Ability to showcase variety might reduce; lesser upselling | Low — User still explores the other aspects of the application to select and finalize |
| Overall (I*C) / (U*V*B) | 1 | 3 |
Why might Smart Group Trip Planner work?
Market Trends: According to a report by McKinsey, 71% of consumers expect companies to offer personalized interactions. Data shows that 53% of Gen Z and 57% of Millennials prefer personalized travel planning aided by AI travel planning tools. User Psychology: People are already using AI to plan their trips; people like planning their trips as it's an experience in itself; solution replicates the real-life journey of user. “The high value and attachment placed on products and experiences that you build yourself, regardless of the result.”
How will this solution benefit MMT?
New User Pull from Group creation effect; Opportunity to upsell all aspects of trip through itinerary; Competitive Edge in the market; Data Insights of group planning journey, preferences etc.; Innovating with the current technology trends; Reduction in Time to book by user due to enhanced decision making with groups.
How Will the Solution Look Like?
If Kabir from ZNMD would plan his Bachelorette Party using our Smart Group Trip Planner!
1. Kabir gets introduced with Trip Planner and its features
2. Creates a Trip and shares link with Arjun and Imran
3. Enter their decided dates and explores destinations to go (Suggestion by AI)
4. Kabir suggests Barcelona and Imran suggests Pamplona
5. They Vote and Finalize Barcelona!
6. Explores Stays in Barcelona
7. Adds liked stay to the trip
8. Books the stay — trip gets auto updated; Arjun and Imran are notified about the booking
9. Generates Itinerary with AI — Updated Trip Details
High-Level Solution Architecture
- Asks AI to create Itinerary
- Creates Itinerary
- Fetch Saved Preferences
- Share back the itinerary
- Saves the itinerary data
- Display Itinerary
Components: Data Cloud Storage, Trip Details Database, AI Algorithm, Application Server, Load Balancer, Itinerary Database.
How Will We Measure Success of the Solution?
North Star
No. of bookings from Trip Planner
Our primary purpose to introduce Trip Planner is to increase the number of bookings
L1 Metrics
No. of new users joined using Trip Planner
Our secondary purpose is to increase the number of users on the platform
L2 Metrics
% of AI suggestions getting converted to booking
To understand how much conversions are increasing via AI suggestions
Adoption
% of users successfully making any bookings using Trip Planner
To understand how much users are using it and are finding value
Engagement
% of users creating itineraries using AI
To understand how much users are engaging with AI to create plan trips
Guardrail
% of Trips created without any bookings
If people are not eventually booking from Trip Planner, the feature is not giving enough value to user and business
System
Response Time of Itinerary generation by AI
To check if users are getting the AI responses smoothly
What Can Go Wrong?
- User might not be satisfied with suggestions by AI — Add option to mark AI suggestions as helpful and keep refining AI personalization
- Users might have bookings at other platforms and will find the itinerary incomplete to use — Add option to add bookings manually or via email forwards to make the itinerary complete