Travelers in India are opting for small and unbranded hotels, villas or inns and not expensive star hotels. The credits for the same goes to the popular hotel review and booking websites that provide high ratings for such hotels that are decent and reasonable.
For instance, Jaipur Friendly Villa or Kaiya House at Varkala in Kerala are not too popular or exquisite as the five star hotels in those regions, but they are rated better than some of the top hotels in India on the travel review sites. This rating makes them more accessible to the entire world. Moreover, the highlight is that such small hotels, villas or home stays are more affordable than the star hotels.
Regarding this, President of travel website Yatra.com, Sharat Dhall claimed that they have noticed a majority bookings falling in the up to Rs 3,000 category of spenders. Notably, the unbranded hotels make up almost half the total inventory of the website.
Moreover, it is claimed by the industry experts that this segment of accommodation is witnessing a growth of around 20 percent per year. According to Tarun Gulati, Founder of Djubo that assists hotels and booking websites to coordinate sales, the entire growth for the hotel business online lies in the unbranded segment. He added that, thousands of unknown hotels are listed on the websites and they receive the same coverage as the branded hotels get online. This provides such hotels a level playing field against the big players in the segment.
Notably, the unbranded hotels make use of the online booking sites as their primary or sometimes the only way to get business and hence, they provide 10 percent to 15 percent commission to these websites. Contradictorily, the star hotels use such websites only as another platform for sales as they already run loyalty programmes. According to the CEO of GoIbibo, Sanjay Bhasin, the unbranded hotels are neat and clean and they provide basic amenities that the travelers sought for.
Online operators including Yatra, Makemytrip, Cleartrip, Goibibo and Ezeego1 are currently occupied in scaling up their hotel catalog to include many locations with an increase in the number of unbranded hotels as they are need of the hour.
