Tuesday, April 7th, 2026.
Welcome to Quests Daily | Your Compass for the Day in Travel.
The Lead Story: MakeMyTrip Under Scrutiny
MakeMyTrip is facing fresh scrutiny after activist short seller Morpheus Research alleged the OTA continues anti-competitive hotel pricing practices and is subject to an undisclosed CCI investigation. The claims follow the Competition Commission of India’s 2022 order fining MakeMyTrip and directing changes to its market conduct.
For operators, this reopens a core structural question: who controls hotel pricing, visibility, and demand flow in India’s OTA ecosystem? If the allegations gain traction, hotel groups may revisit parity enforcement, marketplace dependency, and channel concentration risk. Distribution teams should watch for any shift in contracting language, ranking mechanics, or regulator commentary. For OTAs and travel tech players, this is less a stock story than a signal that platform power, merchant leverage, and supplier trust are back under the microscope.
The Briefing:
FLY91 adds three domestic routes: Regional carrier FLY91 launched services to Rajahmundry, Vijayawada, and Hubballi, expanding Tier-2 India connectivity.
EASA warns tighter flight corridors are raising safety risks: The European regulator said conflict-driven airspace closures are concentrating traffic and increasing operational safety concerns.
India says ATF supply is secure for 60 days: Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Rammohan Naidu said India has uninterrupted aviation turbine fuel supplies for the next 60 days despite West Asia tensions.
Visual- Stat of the Day:
Takeaway: The key signal is that Indian hotels still have room to grow without sacrificing rate. ICRA’s FY26 outlook points to a healthy mix of revenue growth, high occupancy, and rising room rates at the same time. With demand in premium hotels still outpacing supply growth across major cities, the sector is holding on to pricing discipline. For operators, this is less about recovery and more about a market that still supports ADR protection.
AI in Travel:
Case: Corporate travel tools are moving from simple chatbots to copilots that can predict disruptions, flag visa issues early, personalise itineraries, and trigger rebookings before a traveller is affected.
Risk: The biggest challenge is governance. Travel managers are worried about security, compliance, duty of care, and the “trust gap” that comes when automation acts without enough human oversight.
Action operators should test: Start with one bounded workflow such as disruption monitoring or policy-exception review, where AI can assist decision-making but a human still approves the final action.
Term of the Day: Booking Curve Compression
The shortening of time between search, booking, and travel, usually caused by fare volatility, uncertainty, or last-minute inventory releases.
Used when: forecasting airline demand, OTA conversion shifts, or hotel same-week pickup patterns.
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