1. Better management of changes in travel plans of onward and return trips. Say, if the return date of travel changes, then you just need to change the ticket for return journey, and not for the entire journey.

2. Also there were no incentives in terms of discounts in booking round trip tickets.

But in the past few months, several Airlines have started to give significant discounts on the purchase of Round trip tickets. For example on a Go Air ticket from Mumbai to Delhi and back, you can save around Rs. 1500/-, if you book a round trip ticket vs. separate onward and return tickets.

See the example search below:

1) Onward Booking fare: Rs. 5376/-

2) Return booking fare: Rs. 4976/-

3) 2-way booking (discounted) fare: Rs. 8762/-

So for this travel you can save 1592/- if you book 2-way.

But is there a catch?

Not really, just that you need to read the terms & conditions carefully for such bookings. Typically, if you expect the travel dates to change, then it may be better to have separate bookings, as the cancellation/change charges will apply on the entire ticket.

But if you are sort of sure, of the travel plans, then it is worth while, to book it in a single ticket and save money.

Try it out by firing out some two way flight searches. And let us know, if its helpful:

And now, we have some good news to share on the front-end too. We just upgraded the UI to, what we think, is a much better layout. It tells upfront what all travel services we provide. For example, many people do not know yet, that we do have Buses, along with Trains and Flights.

Also it should be easier to navigate for people with different needs. For example people, who want to search using a form. But please do not worry, we have retained the default as “natural” (free-text) search, as that’s what you folks, mostly use, isn’t it?

Do let us know, if you like it. Particularly, requesting you to let us know, if we inadvertently, made any things more difficult, which were easier earlier.

Here is how, the old UI (home page) use to look (for comparisons sake):

Below is the new UI (in the red shade — which narrowly missed, cutting it in the final release):

You can try it out here.

This feature was there in our pipeline since long time, and demanded by quite a few users. Earlier, we used to show the flight routes for a default assumed date when the user did not specified the date, which was causing some confusion to our users.

Also from a user-interface point of view it is much more intuitive to  show a big calendar which contains either available-fare, or a link to check fare, when the date is not specified.

So, for flight searches, If you do not specify the date then we will show you the fare calendar. If you specify the date, then we simply show the flight details for that particular date.

More details on Calendar:

We show the calendar for 5 weeks starting from ‘today’. You can click on “Next Week” and “Prev Week” links to see the fares for other weeks. From this calendar you can easily find out the lowest fare in that 5 week period. We show “Check Now” link when there is no data for a cell. By clicking on that link, the flight routes for that particular date is displayed.

For example when you search for “Mumbai to Delhi flights” we will show the fare calendar, which looks as shown below. Since these two are popular airports, you will see that most of the calendar cells are filled up (with the help of searches made by other users earlier).

Mumbai to Delhi flight fare calendar

Another example is “Bangalore to Jammu flights“. In this case the calendar looks a bit sparse — not many searches done for this route perhaps. So, it can be used as date select calendar. Click on any cell, and you will see the flight routes for that particular date.

Bangalore to Jammu flight fare calendar

We think that this feature will be useful for you. Please try it out and let us know what you think.

Now you can get the availability details for both General and Tatkal quota for trains. We have kept the UI simple, just select the appropriate  radio button in the availability column.

Example: Bangalore to Mumbai by train tomorrow

See the below screen shots for more details.

Availability details for Train 1014

Tatkal availability details for train 1014

Please  try out this at 90di.com and give your feedback on this.

Arkid Mitra from microreviews.org contacted 90di.com on twitter for an interview as part of their new series “start-up reviews and interviews”.  The interview was conducted on the same day. The very next day they published it. You can read the full article on microreviews.org.

They have done a wonderful job by doing a comprehensive review of 90di.com. There have pointed out some of the shortcomings of 90di. We need these kind of reviews and feedback. We will address these points.

But couple of things we wanted to clarify:

• Mumbai to Nazira: Yes we do not show routes from Mumbai to Nazira. But we do ‘Near Search’ for this. Nazira doesn’t have Train or Flight connectivity. So we give options where users can choose a ‘big place’ near to Nazira. This list includes Dibrugarh. So if user chooses Dibrugarh, we show routes from Mumbai to Dibrugarh.
• Mumbai to Jammu via Lucknow: 90di understands this query as the user wants routes between Mumbai and Jammu which passes through Lucknow. Since there are direct Train/Flights available between Mumbai and Jammu, we show the direct routes first. We also show the routes which have transit at Lucknow. But we agree that  in order to not confuse the user, we can remove the direct routes (being extra nice can confuse the user just give him what he wants)

Thanks again to Arkid and microreviews.org folks for doing an effort review. All the best for your site folks!

Its been fair amount of time since the last post, as we have been busy implementing stuff. And now its time to announce one such feature, which has been out there silently for past few weeks – Its called ‘Near Search’.

Let me explain how it works.

Often you want to travel to destinations which do not have a railway station or an airport, but have very good road connectivity from nearby big places. To give two examples:

Delhi to Munnar

Mumbai to Kasauli

Like this there are thousands and thousands of small (and/or tourist) places like -  Panchgani, Mahabaleshwar, Puri, Konark, Kedarnath, to name just a few, to which we now will be able to show connectivity and provide help in reaching there.

Behind the scenes the 90di search engine, works hard to find all the better connected places nearby and prompts a list of such places to the traveler.

Figure 1: Near search screen shot

Figure above shows a sample screen-shot of the search Bangalore to Panchgani .

In this case the user can chose the best route (train/flight/bus/and their combination) in two steps.

In the 1st step traveler can chose the best place near to Panchgani, default we give is Satara, also Pune (another nearby big place) is in the list.

In the 2nd Step user can do a route search to the place chosen.

So please do give it a try and let us know what you think. We can’t have enough of your encouragement and improvement feedback.

And if you find a small/tourist place in India not there, just tell us (Give feedback or just comment on this blog) and we promise to add it real-quick!!

Last week they interviewed Khushnood, our co-founder.

You can see the full interview here.

The logo and the search box are now placed at the page center. The menus are moved to the top of the page. What’s new and Buzz sections now come at the page bottom. We have tried to make the home page less cluttered.

See the following thumbnail images (click on the image to see it in full size) to understand the changes we have done.

Please give your feedback on this.

For example if you search for “Goa to Kolkata flights on sunday“,  you will see the connecting flights which you can book in one single click.

Fig: Connecting flights with single booking

Here is a new and fresh look and feel for our search results page.

We have tried to show the results in more user friendly manner.

We have avoided the repetitions (The departure and arrival times used to repeat). In routes which involve at least one change-over, we are now showing the wait time at the transit station.

Along with this we have made some changes to how we get the routes. We now fetch the routes on demand. If you search from Bangalore to Mumbai, initially we show you the train routes. We get the flight routes only if you are interested in it, i.e, if you click on Flights tab. This applies to Bus and Train+Flight routes also. With this we have avoided loading your browser with routes which you don’t want.

Try it out and tell us what you feel about our new UI.

Please see the below images to understand the changes. The images on the left hand side are of the old UI and those on the right hand side are of the new UI.

Flight view in old version

Flight view in new version

Train view in old version

Train view in new version

Bus view in old version

Bus view in new version

Train+Flight view in old version

Train+Flight view in new version