Travel portal eyes hotels in small towns to drive business

He said the company will be focusing on hotels in South East Asian countries, the Middle East and European countries where Indians largely travel.

“We will be investing in artificial intelligence, chatbots, voice and other technologies to grow the hotel reservation business. As per our study only 15 per cent of the hotel bookings are done online which shows there is a huge potential,” said Parikshit Choudhury, Chief Business Officer-India Hotels, Holidays and Alternate Accommodation.

According to Choudhury, about 60,000-70,000 hotel rooms are booked (net of cancellations) per day through the company’s website.

Agreeing that a room let vacant per day/night is a loss for the hotels, Choudhury said the company has designed package for hotels in Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh on day-use basis. He said based on the results it would be expanded to other places. Choudhury also said the company would be offering GoStay certificates to budget hotels to meet certain minimum quality criteria so that a guest can expect some uniformity in services.

“As regards our overseas expansion plans, we are looking at countries where Indian travellers largely go such as South East Asian nations, Europe, Middle East and the like,” Choudhury said.

In a report on MakeMyTrip, Jefferies India said: “The Indian travel market remains a significant long-term growth opportunity with air travel still under-penetrated due to low income levels and online booking of hotels and packages still much below global averages.”