That app is an online travel agency: a site or app that searches flights, hotels, trains, buses and things to do, and sells them. Most trips now begin on one. This Industry Vertical follows a trip from the search to the room, and it begins here.
The online travel agency's real product is search. It searches a huge inventory, meaning all the seats and rooms for sale, which changes all the time. Prices move by the minute. And the site promises that the seat or room it shows will really be there when you book it. Travel sites earn mainly by taking a share of each booking, which the industry calls a commission. The systems that connect them to the airlines and hotels are covered in Market Segment 29.2, Travel distribution (GDS) and airline software.
Much of this software is written in India. The world's largest online travel companies run some of their biggest engineering centres here, and India has a strong travel industry of its own.
Every company named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Famous companies that don't actively hire software engineers in India are left out.
This Market Segment has two sub-segments, The world's travel sites that build in India, and India's own.
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Continue with Google- The world's travel sites
- India's own
Take the Goa trip from the start of this Market Segment. Some of the biggest travel sites you might search on are foreign, but much of their software is built in India.
Agoda sells hotels, homes and flights across Asia and the world. Its Indian centres build much of its product. It has engineers in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and other cities, and the most job postings in this Market Segment and in this Industry Vertical.Agoda belongs to Booking Holdings, the American group that also owns Booking.com, Kayak andPriceline . The group posts jobs under its own name for Booking.com and Kayak, with engineers in Bengaluru. It also posts jobs underPriceline , its American flight, hotel and car-rental site, with engineers in Mumbai.Expedia Group runs Expedia, Hotels.com and Vrbo. Much of their search and pricing is built in Gurugram. It has engineers in Delhi and Bengaluru.Airbnb runs a marketplace of homes and experiences, hosted by individuals rather than hotels. It has engineers in Bengaluru.Headout sells tickets to attractions and experiences at the destination. It has engineers in Bengaluru.
Four more build partly in Bengaluru:
Trip.com, Skyscanner and Tripadvisor are not covered in this Market Segment.
Back to the Goa trip from the start of this Market Segment. The bus home on Monday night was probably booked on an Indian app.
EaseMyTrip, Yatra and OYO are not covered in this Market Segment.
Travel search has always been a form: dates and places. AI models turn it into a conversation. You describe the trip in a sentence, and the assistant plans it with flights, hotels and things to do. Then an AI agent books it all. Every company here is building such an assistant. The open question is where travellers will plan: on the travel site, or in a general AI assistant that books through the travel site.
Who these companies hire, and for what, is on What travel tech companies hire for.