Cleartrip has launched Activities. As the name suggests, the section lists various activities that you can take up on weekends or otherwise. While it might look like a new product vertical for travelers, there is more to this product vertical, or rather engagement strategy.
There are 3 things to note about this feature:
1. It is app only.
2. The launch cities are not where people go to travel but where the Cleartrip’s audience lives.
3. The activities chosen are for locals, not for travelers visiting the place. Most of them.
For a segment like travel booking, which happens couple of times in a year, most people would uninstall the app after a use. This feature gives the users a reason to keep the app and open it every week. I would expect Cleartrip doesn’t limit itself to paid activities only.
It is very important for transaction systems to have an engagement feature else the acquisition cost is not limited to every new user but for every new transaction. And with transactions being a commodity, the product might just become very difficult arbitrage game.
Your product always needs to do more than just the feature that makes you money.
Incase you like this feature, Explara and Townista are doing this decently.
Flipkart had recently promoted an engagement tool on its app, albeit short lived – Read about the #ThumbThing.