Newstrack

Yatra.com to market low budget hotels

Sanjeev Bhar - New Delhi

In a bid to differentiate itself from other travel portals, Yatra.com is trying to change the landscape of online hotel reservation in its own distinctive manner. It wants to promote online visibility of low budget hotels, which cannot afford to go online.

In an exclusive conversation with Express Hospitality, Dhruv Shringi, co-founder of Yatra.com informed that the site is going to be very interactive in its outlook and is focusing strongly on providing small segment hotels a platform to go online. "Smaller budget hotels do not have the technology or marketing resources to sell online. Hence, we at Yatra aim at providing these hotels an access to technology, thereby acting as the marketing arm for these smaller hotels," revealed Shringi.

The online hotel reservation segment in India is currently at a nascent stage. "As part of the marketing services, we will be providing the hotels with customer trends and other MIS which will help them better market their services," Shringi said. Yatra.com currently has an alliance with over 1,000 hotels across 140 cities and this number, he remarked, is only going to rise with time according to our plan.

Yatra.com has alliance with hotels, which ranges from Rs 250 to Rs 25,000 per room night. Shringi added, "We have taken into consideration the jungle resorts in places like Corbett, Kanha, etc., apart from hotels and lodges in Dharamshala in Katra, and also, a vast range of budget hotels. We currently have arrangements with a few spas - a sector that will grow rapidly in future." Nearly 85 per cent of the Indians travel in an unorganised manner. By the end of 2006, the company is looking at achieving 25 per cent of the market share in an online travel segment.