Cleartrip rolls out route finding and booking service Waytogo

Cleartrip Travel Services Pvt Ltd, which runs the online travel booking site Cleartrip.com, has rolled out route-planner cum ticket booking service Waytogo that enables users to find routes from point A to point B around the globe by air, road and rail. The OTA has partnered with Melbourne-based Rome2Rio to launch the service.

With the service, users can find routes such as New Delhi to Venice, or from Mumbai to Alibaug, depending on what the user searches for. We tried using the feature, and although the service is in beta as of now, it was working fine. According to the company, the service covers around 2.5 million places, 670 airlines and 600 ground transportation providers (trains, buses, local transit, ferries, etc.) across the globe.

Apart from searching for routes, users can also compare time of travel, mode of transport, as well as prices. One can also compare different routes on a map and select the cheapest or the most convenient one. And for those who are concerned about global warming, the company provides an option to choose the 'greenest' route to go to their destination with the help of an indicative 'green star rating' alongside each route.

Once a route a route is selected, users can also book their tickets from the Cleartrip site. For the services not provided directly by the company, it redirects to external sites (like redBus for bus booking) which provides the same.

NASDAQ-listed MakeMyTrip already offers a similar service called Route Planner. Travel search engine service Ixigo also offer a trip planner service. In India, Cleartrip competes with homegrown majors such as MakeMyTrip, Via, Yatra and Goibibo.com. Recently, Cleartrip started offering bus ticketing on its site. For the same, the company partnered with bus ticketing sites redBus and Travelyaari. The OTA already offers bookings for hotels, flights and trains.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)