Sudipta Dev – Mumbai
India is a significant market in the Asia Pacific for global online accommodation major Booking.com. There are over 55 million recent, verified, authentic customer reviews on Booking.com, with an average of over 100,000 new reviews being added each day. “That’s an average of over 70 reviews per accommodation. Empowering our customers with all of the information that they need to find the perfect accommodation based on their individual wants and needs is our absolute priority,” said Vikas Bhola, area manager, South Asia, Booking.com, adding that the company also has a 24-7 customer service function via the phone or email available across the globe in 42 languages, including Hindi.
Booking.com has offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru and employs over 50 people throughout the country. “We plan to continue growing our business in India by strenghtening our partnerships with accommodation providers throughout the country. We will also continue to offer our customers the broadest range of accommodations with a best price guarantee,” stated Bhola. According to him, what gives the company a competitive advantage in this market is the business approach and model. “We offer a best price guarantee – which means our customers will never pay more anywhere else – alongside an unparalleled selection of accommodations and award winning customer service across the world to travellers. We do not charge booking fees and we provide free cancellation on almost all properties,” he added.
There are over 800,000 accommodation providers on Booking.com and Bhola affirms that the company offers a highly cost-effective marketing channel for them to bring in business. “We empower our hotel and accommodation partners to capitalise on the growing internet opportunity, enabling them to make their brands visible to a global audience, thus attracting more business. They only pay commission to us once we have delivered revenue for a hotel, once a customer has stayed in and paid for a room,” he mentioned. Booking.com helps accommodations of all types to adapt their marketing and distribution strategy to the new reality of digital consumer behavior – from mobile to apps and beyond.
Giving his views on the online booking space in India which is going through a major churn with the emergence of room aggregators, Bhola stated, “Competition is always good for the ecosystem, it fuels innovation and we like it. Regarding room aggregators, they have contributed to standardising the unstructured budget hotel space and we partner with most of them in the form of a distribution channel.”