From One Happy Place to Another: When Disney Came Calling at MMT

On the morning of Monday, 13^th May 2013, Trippers were greeted by delightful decorations that adorned all three floors. There were colourful flyers and balloons everywhere - red, blue and white, taped to the ceiling and sitting pretty on workstations held by chocolate bars that prevented them from flying about.

Cut-outs of some of the most adorable Disney characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto only added to the delight and everyone knew there was fun stuff lined up for the day. It was certainly unlike the usual Mondays that all of us dread so much!

Soon after, WE informed all Trippers to gear up for the Hong Kong Fest; a celebration of one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world. The first week of the month-long celebrations kicked off with celebrating Hong Kong Disneyland as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Goofy and Donald Duck danced their way into MMT, shaking hands and a leg or two with Trippers and giving away Hong Kong Fest badges.

And our excited Trippers too left no chance of posing for the cameras with their favourite Disney characters. From one happy place to another; the atmosphere was ecstatic, to say the least!

The fun certainly does not stop here as next up is the Hong Kong Movie Festival. What do you think will happen this time; will your favourite movie stars come visiting this time around? Let’s wait and watch!

Of Photographs, iGROW, MMT Video & More

‘Thank God Its Thursday’ was the order of the day on May 16^th as Trippers started pouring in for work as usual but were quite taken in by the new photographic artefacts around the office. The newspaper veils on them had everyone’s curiosity piqued pretty high.

The Ribbon Cutting | Photo Credit: Amit Goswami

The internal Photo Contest held last year got a beautiful culmination in the form of gorgeous photo display concepts to add even more magic to the work place. The big reveal was the Trippin Wall, a cool new spot for Trippers to showcase their photography talents.

The Trippin Wall | Photo Credit: Ragini Mehra

But that was about the office decoration. Kudos to all the Trippers for their enthusiastic participation and a special mention to Pranav, Saba, Swati, Shreya, Ekesh and Rajesh for the great execution.

The L-Team picking their Favourites | Photo Credits: Amit Goswami

There was more to go…

Gurpreet and Marc introduced everyone to the brilliant iGROW self-learning base. An online module, it carries extremely useful training sessions across a range of domains. The best part is that all these are quick courses that can be taken when on the move or even during breaks.  You can leave comments and recommend courses too. I have already made a list of the trainings I am going to take, have you?

The Launch of iGROW | Photo Credit: Amit Goswami

Tarika presented the in-house video of the Trippers, by the Trippers and for the Trippers to feature at GPTW. It was high on energy, humour and MakeMyTrip values.

Honestly, there couldn’t have been a better grand finale!

The Seven Sins Of IPL

The IPL season is here. It’s time to celebrate your favourite teams, scorn the ones you do not like, lie to your bosses and disappear from work to watch matches, eat all day and get away from work with a bad-stomach-sick-leave and break stuff when the television signal goes down; in short, enjoy the match and be your rowdiest best.

No, this isn’t a scene from the Purge, neither is this a one-day bad mood-swing. For the sins of IPL 2013 are going to last for two long months, and yes, in the end YOU WILL walk free. Yes you will!

Here are the 7 Sins of IPL. If you love Cricket, it's time you committed these. We hope you have already started!   

Sloth

Thou shalt watch a late night game and come to work for a day-long snooze. Thou shalt do it with such confidence, that guilt would not dare to rise from thy conscience.

 

Pride

Thou shalt take utmost pride in showing off cool cricketing memorabilia and will not leave any chance to boast about that recent meeting with your favourite team. Thou shalt get this news published everywhere; like on this blog. 

Gluttony

For the rest of IPL, thou shalt not get up to use a dustbin but eat all that’s available to eat within arm's length. Thou shall be wary for God will come down with hailstorms and tornados on him who fails to hog like there’s no tomorrow. 

Lust

Thou shalt spend all thy free time lusting over IPL cheerleaders. Thou shalt spare cheerleaders from no team and will commit the sin of lust being totally free from the spirit of rivalry. 

Wrath

Thou shalt go crazy on the slightest premonition of signal breakdown and not spare thy television for shutting itself in mid-climax. Thou shalt flow profusely in emotions and commit the sin of smashing thy television, even when the problem is just the signal.  

Envy

Thou shalt get that cricket bat signed by thy favourite team and commit the sin of showing it off to envious friends. Thou shall commit it with utmost ruthlessness refusing thy friend of even a touch of the sacred cricketing memorabilia.

  

Greed

Thou shalt commit the sin of stealing from a friend his priceless and sacred cricketing memorabilia without a whiff of guilt and pose it as their own in all future correspondence with family and friends.

Thou shalt not repent for these 7 sins in any way. Thou shalt get up after the IPL season as one gets up from a stroke of amnesia, pretending as if thou does not remember what really happened. 

Photographs by: Tania Seth

Models: Siddharth Dehl and Saurav Prakash 

Introducing Passbook on the MakeMyTrip iPhone App

Ever since we heard this announcement from aviation authorities about allowing paper-free travel at airports, we were gunning to create the best experience for our customers so they could use their mobile devices to travel without the need of taking ticket printouts.

We have been trying a bunch of things to do this in the past 3 months. We introduced a sleek mobile-friendly e-ticket (PDF) for flight bookings that could be saved on your phones and used at airports [See the screenshot below]. We would remind our customers about their upcoming travel and send them the download link through SMS.

This has been working brilliantly for the last few months but the rise of iPhone 5 and the steep growth in usage of iOS 6 (Apple’s latest iPhone OS) meant that we had to build something that was native to this platform – A Passbook.

Today, we’re happy to announce that our iPhone App, supports Passbook for flight tickets — it’s easy, free, fast and really beautiful. You can simply add passbook passes on the booking confirmation page of flight bookings and also by using the “My Bookings” section on the App.

Let us know of your travel experiences using the Passbook by reaching out to us on Facebook and Twitter or by reviewing our App on the App Store.

Happy flying, umm… paperless!

By Anirudh Maitra

Holiday Expert Town Hall Meet 2013: The Grand Red and Black Ceremony

Lights, camera, action! The stage was set and all the glamorous ladies, our very own Holiday Expert (HE) Team, convened at Epicentre, Gurgaon to kick-off the first ever MakeMyTrip HE Town Hall Meet.

Glitz and Glamour

Dressed in enigmatic shades of red and black, the ladies graced their presence on stage and posed for photos, Oscar style.

Ladies dressed to 'wow' in red and blackAs the cameras flashed and the auditorium filled with MMT buzz, Milena built the excitement by sharing details about the company and success of the HE channel, a grand initiative taken in December 2011.

Milena's one-liners kept the audience enthralled Creating History in 18 Months

As an ode to all HE achievers, the evening started with a beautiful AV on ‘women’, with few pictures of inspiring MMT ladies, followed by a snapshot of the amazing HE journey. The statistics were indeed unbelievable, and reflected the tremendous effort put in collectively by the team.

With the audience high on energy and enthusiasm, Mohit Gupta kept the momentum going with an engaging talk on the paradigm shift to HE channel and how this value addition goes a long way in making customers happy.

Happy Trippers - Mohit Gupta, Manish Kalra, Sanket Atal and Sushil Verma

A Bite of the Success Pie

After his invigorating speech, it was time for the highlight of the THM – the Big Awards! With upbeat music in the background, Milena’s funny one-liners and Dheeraj’s funky blow horn, the awards ceremony was filled with fun and frolic. To add to the merriment were the HE ladies, who cheered on their peers for their achievements.

Enthusiastic Holiday Experts sure added the element of fun!Sweet Rewards and Surprises

First up were Manish Kalra and Deepak Rawat, who presented the awards for Outstanding Customer Service and Outbound Achievers. As the claps became louder, Devesh Khanna and Sanket Atal came on stage to give away accolades for the Great Festive Bonanza. And what fancy gadgets and goodies HEs got to take home!

The winning smiles of top performers

What’s more, each top winner was in for a sweet surprise – a beautiful message from her husband! To see husbands express love and pride for women in their lives was indeed the icing on the cake. (One lady shockingly exclaimed ‘are you sure that is from my husband?’)

Through the event, the pretty ladies were all praises for the MMT Operations team, especially Sushil Verma and Divyanshu Saxena (One Expert even went on to say ‘If all else fails, Divyanshu hails!’)

All hail the MMT Operations Team!

As the ‘Red Carpet Awards’, given for exceptional achievements in domestic and international travel, came to a close, Sushil sent the audience in bouts of laughter and kept them captivated with an incredible creative and witty speech.

The all too perfect evening concluded with high tea and delicious snacks including mouth-watering paneer tikkas and crispy French fries.

The first HE THM was a sure-shot success, as many Holiday Experts would enthusiastically agree, and I cannot wait for the event to come back with a bang next year!

Time to rock n' roll post the awards ceremony!By Rachita Verma