DELHI: Indian travelers can now bid for hotel rooms as per what they want to pay. Hotelbids Hospitality, subsidiary of Us based Hotelbids has launched the first of its kind hotel booking app that will enable them to do so for over 2500+ hotels in 69 cities of India. It is basically a two click last minute room booking app.
Hotelbids that targets last-minute hotel bookings. Conceived by Inder Sharma, a serial entrepreneur and founder of Hotel.com, the app tries to make sure that no hotel room should go empty and customers should get a chance to get more than what they hope for. Sharma, with more than 20 years of experience in the hospitality industry said,” Customers don’t get what they deserve. Though hundreds of online travel agencies (OTAs) claim the best deals, the difference in price remains just few rupees. Every night approximately 1.7 million rooms go empty globally. This gap created a need for a platform which is both customer-centric (to get the best deal) and hotel-centric (to fill the capacity)”.
He said that till now, customers go to various travel sites to hunt for the best price for the same room at the same hotel. Plus, no site gives consistent rates. At Hotelbids, customers don’t search, the search comes to them. They just set their price and the specifics desired and the rest comes to them. The request of a customer for hotels in a particular city is broadcast to all hotels in the Hotelbids network, which can respond immediately to accept the offer. Customers can then check the specifics of the hotel before making their decision.
“We are at present building a customer base. So far, we have invested around Rs 3-4 crore mainly on technology and operation for this service. Next year, we plan to invest Rs 70-80 crore in expanding our footprint both in domestic as well as overseas market,” Inder Sharma, President and CEO, Hotelbids said.
Sharma has founded over 13 companies including Hotel.com. Hotelbids is funded by hospitality professionals from the USA. In India, Hotelbids did a soft launch in July, 2016. The app is available at Google Play and App Store and plans to expand to major international markets soon. The company has begun the hotel registration process in United States and will launch in USA in January 2017.
Musafir Namah Bureau
