Where did the list of travel agency websites come from?

From the public member lists of two Indian travel trade associations, ADTOI and ATOAI, which we had already collected. We kept every row with a website, removed duplicates and placeholder addresses, and were left with 439 unique domains. We took a systematic sample of 60 from that list, sorted alphabetically.

Is 60 sites enough to describe every Indian travel agency?

No. It describes association members who list a website, which skews toward established operators. Treat the percentages as a snapshot of that group, with a margin of several points either way, not as a national figure.

Why do you measure HTML size instead of full page weight?

HTML size can be measured the same way for every site with one request. Full page weight depends on lazy loading, ad scripts and the device, so it needs a browser test per site. HTML size is a lower bound: the real download is always larger.

Will you publish the list of sites?

No. The point is the pattern, not naming agencies. The per-site results stay in our records so the numbers can be checked and re-run.

Original data

Indian travel agency websites: a 60 site study (October 2026)

Short answer: of 60 Indian travel agency websites taken from association member lists, 9 did not load at all. Of the 51 that did, 90% worked over HTTPS and 94% had a mobile viewport, but only 31% had a WhatsApp link on the homepage, and the median homepage carried 150 KB of HTML before a single image loaded.

How we measured

Source: the public member lists of ADTOI (Association of Domestic Tour Operators of India) and ATOAI (Adventure Tour Operators Association of India). After removing duplicates, email addresses typed into the website field and placeholder domains, 439 unique websites remained. We sorted them alphabetically and took every seventh or eighth site to get a sample of 60.

On 2026-10-20 a script requested each homepage with a mobile Chrome user agent, first over HTTPS (with and without www), then over plain http. For each site that answered, it recorded whether HTTPS worked, whether http redirected to HTTPS, whether the HTML contained a viewport meta tag, whether it contained a WhatsApp link, the size of the HTML document and whether it was built on WordPress. One request per site, a 20 second timeout, no browser rendering.

Limits: a sample of 60 is small, association members are not every agency in India, and a static HTML check misses anything added later by JavaScript. The numbers are a snapshot of one day.

What we found

9 of 60

listed websites did not load

7 domains no longer resolved in DNS, 1 failed on an expired SSL certificate and 1 refused our request (HTTP 403).

46 of 51

reachable sites worked over HTTPS (90%)

42 of 51 (82%) also redirected the plain http address to HTTPS. The rest left visitors on an unencrypted page.

48 of 51

had a mobile viewport tag (94%)

The viewport tag is the minimum for a page to scale on a phone. It does not prove the layout is good on mobile.

16 of 51

had a WhatsApp link in the homepage HTML (31%)

We looked for wa.me, api.whatsapp.com and similar links. A widget injected later by JavaScript would not be counted.

150 KB

median homepage HTML size

30 of 51 homepages had more than 100 KB of HTML and 18 had more than 200 KB. The largest was 1,373 KB. Images, scripts and fonts are extra.

17 of 51

were built on WordPress (33%)

Detected from wp-content or wp-includes paths in the HTML.

What this means for a travel agency

The basics are mostly in place: HTTPS and a mobile viewport are now normal. The gaps are in the parts that turn a visit into an enquiry. About two in three homepages gave a phone visitor no one tap route to WhatsApp, which is how most Indian travellers prefer to ask about a trip. About one in seven listed websites was no longer reachable at all, so a traveller who found the agency in a directory hit a dead end.

Heavy HTML is a quieter problem. A homepage with several hundred KB of markup, before images and scripts, is slow on a mid range phone on 4G, and travellers comparing three agencies will not wait for the slowest one.

If you want to check your own site, our travel agency website design guide has a launch checklist, and why travel agencies lose bookings on mobile covers the fixes. For a new site, see travel agency website design, our case studies or ask for a free demo.

About this study

Where did the list of travel agency websites come from?: From the public member lists of two Indian travel trade associations, ADTOI and ATOAI, which we had already collected. We kept every row with a website, removed duplicates and placeholder addresses, and were left with 439 unique domains. We took a systematic sample of 60 from that list, sorted alphabetically.
Is 60 sites enough to describe every Indian travel agency?: No. It describes association members who list a website, which skews toward established operators. Treat the percentages as a snapshot of that group, with a margin of several points either way, not as a national figure.
Why do you measure HTML size instead of full page weight?: HTML size can be measured the same way for every site with one request. Full page weight depends on lazy loading, ad scripts and the device, so it needs a browser test per site. HTML size is a lower bound: the real download is always larger.
Will you publish the list of sites?: No. The point is the pattern, not naming agencies. The per-site results stay in our records so the numbers can be checked and re-run.