We recently got to thinking about how we could give customers even more confidence that they're making the right choice when evaluating the hotels they see on our search results. We generated a lot of ideas and many of those will be making their way to a hotel search near you soon.

One of those ideas is an idea that we just absolutely love--displaying the percentage of people that booked an individual hotel in our search results. We all know that we trust the actions of our peers more than we trust advertising messages. So, knowing what percentage of customers booked a certain hotel provides comfort that you're making the right choice.

We've added the percentage data directly below the TripAdvisor rating information:

We hope you find this feature useful and we hope it makes selecting a hotel easier. We've always felt that picking the perfect hotel shouldn't be like finding a needle in a haystack and we hope this little piece of additional information makes it easier to find the perfect hotel for your trip.

We came away from that event transformed--it was a mind-altering, once in a lifetime experience. And although we can't share the full experience of TED India with others that weren't there, we can try to recreate the experience in a small way. That's why we're thrilled to be sponsoring TEDx Mumbai.

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

While the content and design of each TEDx event is unique and developed independently, all TEDx events have several features in common.

What you'll find at TEDx Mumbai:

• TED's celebrated format: A suite of short, carefully prepared talks, demonstrations and performances on a wide range of subjects to foster learning, inspiration and wonder -- and to provoke conversations that matter
• TEDTalks videos: A minimum of two pre-recorded talks from the acclaimed TEDTalks video series will be shown (these talks are available free on TED.com)
• Bias-free programming: Lack of any commercial, religious or political agenda

The organisers of TEDx Mumbai have put together what promises to be a fantastic and diverse lineup of speakers.

The event takes place on April 3rd at Blue Frog. We tried very hard to find a larger venue so that we could accommodate more people, but were out of luck there. The cost of entry is Rs. 1,000 and includes lunch and beers.

Only 160 seats are available, so if you'd like to come watch the amazing speakers and mingle with an equally amazing audience, register today.

We will also be giving away a few free tickets to the event to some lucky customers. These special guests of Cleartrip will also have the privilege of attending a dinner with the speakers on the evening of April 2 where they can meet each speaker in person and get to know them. If you'd like to score one of these free tickets, stay tuned to our Twitter presence @Cleartrip.

Celebrity endorsement is a strategy in brand communication where a celebrity acts as the ambassador and spokesperson for a brand. By endorsing the brand, the celebrity is certifying the brand's claim and position by extending his or her personality, popularity and stature to the brand.

There are three essential aspects that brands must consider before embarking down the road of celebrity endorsement:

1. Attractiveness of the celebrity
2. Credibility of the celebrity
3. Meaningful connection between the celebrity and the brand

If one were to examine India Inc's endorsement deals in light of these three aspects, they don't hold up well; especially with respect to the third aspect. Very few of the endorsement deals in place establish any connection at all between the celebrity and the brand or product being endorsed.

It is easy to see why Indian celebrities have jumped on to the endorsement bandwagon with gusto--greed is a powerful motivator. Understanding why Indian advertisers are so gung ho about celebrity endorsements, however, is a mystery. There is very little to suggest that the current crop of endorsement deals is effective or well engineered.

The success of any brand-celebrity pairing depends heavily on the credibility of the connection between the brand and the celebrity. Successful brand-celebrity collaborations come from the integrity of the relationship between brand and celebrity.

Nike and Michael Jordan are a shining example of a brand-celebrity relationship with real, solid integrity. It is easy to see why Michael Jordan endorses Nike's products--he actually, actually uses their products every day. It is equally easy to see why Nike wants Jordan as their spokesman--he is the very best of his breed; he represents the pinnacle of excellence that Nike's brand stood for even before it paired up with Jordan.

When a relationship has integrity, like the Nike/Jordan relationship has, it breeds success beyond anything that has come before it. The Nike/Jordan relationship went well beyond any athletic endorsement deal that preceded it. Prior to this deal, athletes were paid to wear the products of the brands they endorsed and not much else. Nike created the Air Jordan brand and an entire line of products was built around their relationship with Jordan.

Michael Jordan, in fact, has so much personal integrity, that he refuses to endorse any brand that he doesn't use himself. When Jordan signed an endorsement deal with Oakley, the sunglasses company, he took a seat on Oakley's board and accepted a paltry half million dollars as cash compensation. Jordan endorsed Oakley and took a board seat instead of cash because he believed in the products, because he used the products every day.

Let's compare the Nike/Jordan relationship with some of India Inc's relationships:

• Shahrukh Khan and Santro
• Priyanka Chopra and Hero Honda
• Preity Zinta and TVS Scooty
• Juhi Chawla and Dena Bank

We've just listed four relationships here, but the list is as long as the relationships are ridiculous. These brand-celebrity relationships strain credibility to the levels of Bollywood movies. Does anyone really believe that Shahrukh Khan drives a Santro? Or that Priyanka Chopra and Preity Zinta ride scooters? Or that Juhi Chawla actually entrusts her net worth to Dena Bank?

Most of India's brand-celebrity relationships are completely bankrupt--there is absolutely no connection established between the brand and the celebrity endorsing it. In many cases, the celebrity just eclipses the brand; audiences remember the celebrity, but they forget which brand is being advertised. The only things driving these relationships are the greed of celebrities and the foolishness of big-budget advertisers.

Aside: There's a reason you've never seen Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro or Julia Roberts in a commercial. Hollywood stars actually see advertising deals as cheapening their image. Bollywood stars are too cheap to look at things that way.

Grouping itineraries with the same price and airline

With our original design, a roundtrip search for Bombay to London would bring up over a hundred different options. Very often, a lot of the options shown were from a single airline and all at the exact same fare. The differences among these options boil down to differing stopover airports or connecting flights. So, we tweaked the design to show only one of those options with a link to see all the other available options. We think it makes more sense to group these flights together and expose them only to users that have a genuine interest in a specific airline/price combination.

Multiple airline filter

Are you one of those people that avoid mixed airline itineraries like the plague? Flying on an itinerary that contains multiple airlines can cause severe heart burn when flights are delayed or baggage is lost. Now, there's a nifty little filter that will remove all mixed airline itineraries from results with a single click.

Airline alliance filter

Finally, if you're an avid collector of airline miles, we've made it dead simple for you to select an airline that is part of your favourite airline miles program or alliance. Just click on the alliance name to display only those options which will let you earn more miles. We hope we've made it easier for you to never miss out on frequent flier miles ever again.

We've always been big fans of improving all the little things, because it's all the little things that add up to a big difference. We hope these little changes make it easier for you to pick the international flights that suit you best. Go ahead give them a whirl.

Today we're thrilled to announce that as of last Friday, Cleartrip's flight search now includes Air India Express.

Air India Express (AI Express) is the low cost carrier launched by India's flag carrier, Air India. AI Express is the country's only low cost carrier operating on both domestic and international routes and has some fantastic fares, giving our customers savings of over 20% on busy routes such as Mumbai-Delhi and to Middle East destinations such as Dubai.

Our integration with AI Express also makes Cleartrip the only online travel agency to offer AI Express flights for both domestic and international bookings--making us the most comprehensive online travel agent around.

AI Express seats sell out fast, so make sure you book well in advance to take advantage of their amazing fares.

Mashable has unveiled 5 shocking statistics around Twitter's valuation based on numbers from the Private Equity Data Center

1. The price of a single share of Twitter has increased by 239,619%, from a measly $0.00667 per share to a much stronger $15.9824.
2. Twitter’s $100 million round is more than 1025 times the amount of money they raised in their first round of funding. In July of 2007, Twitter raised $97,500.
3. In five rounds of funding, Twitter has raised an estimated $153 million. Since the day of its initial round of funding, Twitter has been given an average of $187,356 per day by its investors.
4. In the same time frame and given its current $1 billion valuation, Twitter’s worth has grown by $1,223,990 per day. If you start with the day that the the first tweet from Twitter’s Inventor and Chairman, Jack Dorsey was posted, then Twitter’s worth has grown by around $772,797 per day.
5. Twitter has yet to turn one red cent of profit.

These numbers are nothing short of astounding.

Interestingly, the pie-chart below shows that the Jet/JetLite combine has a whopping 27% share of sales, far ahead of any other airline.

The Times of India, India's largest selling English daily, ran a story yesterday entitled Jet strike saw online agents hijack fares. Now, it is one thing for a newspaper to print sensationalist headlines, but to completely manufacture a story and falsify news crosses the line. The story alleges that online travel agents took advantage of the Jet Airways' pilots' strike to gouge customers and raise prices:

Online travel portals have reportedly been found to have raised fares to astronomical levels by means of "black marketing and hoarding," according to a top aviation ministry official. "We have found that some portals and airlines devised ways of going to fare levels of a nearly full flight to sell tickets at a premium," the official said.

This journalist is clearly from another planet; a planet where editors allow stories to be published even when they don't contain a single fact. The journalist has several quotes in the story from 'aviation ministry officials", but each quote is anonymous. The journalist also alleges that online travel companies pre-purchase tickets from airlines, something none of the online travel companies actually do.

The journalist does not interview or name even a single customer that was offered or purchased these 'astronomical' fares. Neither does the journalist present any research or evidence that shows price comparisons on online sites, nor is any particular online site named in the article.

The journalist goes on to state that tickets have "been sold for up to Rs 20,000." And that statement is what leads us to believe that this journalist actually writes for The Times of Mars and his story was mistakenly filed with The Times of India.

This graph shows the average price for one-way tickets sold by Cleartrip over the last two weeks:

The average price for the time period is Rs. 2,829; with a high of Rs. 2,952 and a low of Rs. 2,747. The actual numbers are a far cry from the journalist's imaginary Rs. 20,000 levels.

If this story was actually written to report the news on this planet, we have a tip for The Times of India's reporters--a news article is referred to as a 'story,' but that doesn't mean you get to make it up. Sloppy, lazy and sensationalist reporting is something we expect from tabloids, not from newspapers.