Ixigo Revamps Trip Planner - Bets Big on Content & Apps

Online, March 20, 2014 (Newswire.com) - ixigo.com, India's leading travel planning & search engine, has announced a major revamp to its trip planner product with some great content and social features. Announcing the revamp, Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-Founder said - "Thanks to the ever-expanding content coverage on trip planner and our unbundled approach to solving specific travel use cases on mobile apps, we have registered a 2x year-on-year growth. We now have over 2.5 million active users every month and have seen almost 2.5 million app downloads across our 5 apps. We think this is just the beginning!"

New Features:
● Street view of monuments - ixigo has become the first travel site to integrate the Google street view feature to offer 360-degree views of historical monuments. ixigoers will now be able to get panoramic views of key monuments and historical sites in India, providing a real virtual tourist experience of what the place actually looks like. This will help travellers in planning their trips better by knowing in advance what to expect at these historical sites.

● Expanded content coverage - ixigo now covers tourist information over 5000 cities, towns and hill-stations in India. It provides detailed information including names, addresses, locations, photos, opening timings, prices, detailed tourist guides etc. for over 63000 places to visit, 17000 activities and things to do, 16000 hotels, 5000 nature and wildlife spots and over 5,000 tips from travellers. This makes it more comprehensive than any other travel site in India.

● Finding restaurants across the country - ixigo now features over 65,000 restaurants across India on its website and apps. ixigo also offers the useful 'Near Me' location-based mobile feature in its app that helps people explore great local places to eat at, stay or explore in whichever city they are.

● Ability to add new places and pictures - Travellers can now add interesting places to visit, hotels, restaurants and even photos making the website more comprehensive, and in turn more informative for fellow travellers.

● User Generated Ratings & Reviews - ixigoers can now easily rate and review a place they visited on the website or on the ixigo apps for android and iOS. ixigo already offers over 175,000 reviews and over 23,000 ratings of places. These ratings and reviews are used to rank places better in ixigo's search results.

● Review of trains and train stations - The ixigo trains app now provides users with the ability to rate and review trains, platforms and facilities while on the go.

"Travellers have become more independent than ever; a recent survey we conducted among frequent travellers revealed that 67% like to plan their trip themselves. With our relentless focus on mobile, semantic search, depth of content and user-generated photos, ratings and reviews, we are well positioned to become the brand of choice for Indian travellers looking for smarter travel research & planning tools and trustworthy travel information." said Rajnish Kumar, CTO & Co-Founder, ixigo.com.

About ixigo.com

ixigo.com is India's leading travel planning and search website, voted as the Product of the Year 2013, in the Travel category. Launched in 2007 by IIT, INSEAD and Amadeus alumni, ixigo.com's vision is to simplify the life of travellers through innovative travel products for Internet & mobile. The website searches, aggregates and curates travel content across hundreds of travel sites, allowing travellers to access relevant travel information. Its suite of mobile apps: ixigo app, trains (both Mobbys award winners), pnr status, road trips, buses and goa travel guide help over 2.5 million travellers every month in finding answers to their travel related queries.

ixigo.com is an investee company of SAIF Partners & MakeMyTrip Limited. For more information, visit www.ixigo.com and keep up with updates on Facebook at www.facebook.com/ixigo and Twitter at www.twitter.com/ixigo

Media Contact:
Simran Kodesia - [email protected] (+91 8588832406)
Shreya Sabharwal - [email protected] (+91 9818341002)