iXiGO.com which recently got funded has launched hotel search. Hotels has been a domain which first came into focus when travelguru shifted its focus from being a flight booking engine to a hotel booking engine. It was only natural for iXiGo which was primarily a search engine for flights to include hotels sooner or later. I also expect bus and rail to be added soon as that would complete the term travel search engine which it claims to be.

Currently iXiGO’s hotel search can search through 4500 hotels in 320 Indian cities. iXiGO’s hotel search provides users with information on budget accommodation across hostels, guest-houses, serviced apartments and villas.

As iXiGo is just a search engine it does not provide booking but instead redirects to 30 national and international hotel booking websites.

Mr. Aloke Bajpai, Founder & CEO of iXiGO said, “We are bringing our disruptive flight search model to hotel bookings by allowing instant real-time search across hotel booking sites. By comparing aggregators like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Desiya and some exclusive international content partners such as HotelsCombined, we hope to strategically integrate with booking sites of independent hotels and hotel chains in the future, to better manage their yields and lower their internet distribution costs”.

iXiGo is my favourite search engine when it comes to searching for flights but the biggest issue that I see is that people will search and then book from the original site. Thats exactly what I do. I search from iXiGo and then go to the official site instead of clicking the link from iXiGo. Dont ask me why! Its only because I want to recheck if there is any lower prices.

I think the same  would be the case with hotels. What iXiGo needs to figure out is a monetization strategy that doesn’t get affected by such habits.

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