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Online travel company MakeMyTrip has outlined plans to introduce ‘Short Stays’, an innovative concept that enables travellers to stay in hotels for short durations of 4,8 and12 hours.
The Nasdaq-listed travel company, which has Goibibo and Redbus under its fold, has piloted a project in the pilgrim town of Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh where it offered short stays for pilgrims who want to just to freshen up at a hotel and complete their pilgrimage and go back home.
“Having tried this as a pilot initiative, we’re planning to soon lunch this across India as an innovative and much needed offering,” Parikshit Choudhury, Chief Business Officer, MakeMyTrip, said.
Speaking here today, the MakeMyTrip official said that this offering comes after a lot of research and understanding the need to offer short duration stays. This offer suits travellers who want short stays and hoteliers who can have more than one customer during the day. “It is a win-win situation for both and the model is expected to be beneficial to travellers, who do not have to spend for the whole day’s room tariff,” Choudhury said.
“The online retail constitutes about 15 per cent of hotel booking industry and of this MakeMyTrip accounts for about 70 per cent of this business. We have about 50,000 hotels and 10,000 home stays in our network and the number continues to grow,” he said.
The online travel facilitator is also looking at offering another innovative solution for the budget segment with Go Stays, where the room tariff is about ₹1,000 to ₹1,200 for one night.
Partnership with ICICI
MakeMyTrip also announced that it has tied up with ICICI Bank to introduce co-branded cards to make travel a more rewarding experience for Indians on the move. Along with savings and travel spends, these cards will offer exclusive benefits to all card holders, the company stated. ‘MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Platinum Credit Card’ and ‘MakeMyTrip ICICI Bank Signature Credit Card’ are the cards launched as part of this partnership.
The cards allow the customers to convert their daily spends to MakeMyTrip ‘MyCash’, the reward currency of the travel portal. Each reward point earned as ‘My Cash’ has a value of ₹1. It can be redeemed across an array of categories on the travel portal and its partner merchants.
Anup Bagchi, Executive Director, ICICI Bank, said that he was delighted by the partnership and added, “In line with the customer requirement, the new co-branded card offers customers unmatched benefits on travel related spends. We believe that this card will be yet another imperative addition to our existing range of credit and debit cards.”
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