Hotels.com launches Indian Operations
TravelGuru was one of the first Indian websites to shift its focus from airline ticketing to hotel booking. Cleartrip and MakeMyTrip realised the potential of raking in profits from hotel booking too.
Last August Cleartrip added TripAdvisor’s hotel reviews and also added hotel maps.
So why hotels?
Unlike the air booking industry where the profit margins are slim, more profits exist in the hotel booking sector.
Its convenient and it makes business sense and thats the reason we are seeing more players in this field.
We’ve seen Raahi and OkTataByeBye incentivising UGC by asking users to pool in their reviews. Its these communities and sites like enTrip.com which are going to win in the longer run when it comes to hotel booking. Fellow travellers are going to trust the views of those who’ve been to a place before.
As far as the sites which are looking to remain transactional sites, they are eyeing the corporates. Convincing a company which has around 50-500 employees to be your clients and handle all hotel bookings for them is going to get you more money than an entire travel community put together over a period of a month.
A little more about Hotels.com: Hotels.com was founded in Dallas, Texas in 1991 as Hotel Reservations Network (HRN) by David Litman and Bob Diener as a toll-free telephone service, offering consumers discounted hotel rooms in major cities. In 2002 HRN introduced the website Hotels.com and changed the company’s name to Hotels.com.
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Expedia Inc is the Parent company of Hotels.com
Hotels.com recently acquired the domain Hotels.co.in (Not our domain)
http://whois.domaintools.com/hotels.co.in