Huge headroom for growth in online hotel bookings: Saujanya Shrivastava

Travel company MakeMyTrip has embarked a five-week long campaign, conceptualised by Publicis Capital, focussing on its new feature – ‘Pay at Checkout’ – which went live on September 30, 2016.

The latest campaign is a continuation of the Ranveer Singh-Alia Bhatt campaign rolled out in February this year. In line with the company’s aggressive efforts to tap into the hotel bookings segment and further build on its leadership position, the brand campaign aimed to drive consumers to shift from offline to online for hotel bookings.

Over the years, MakeMyTrip has revolutionised the online hotel and flight booking business in India and today claims to have a market share of around 47 per cent.

Talking about the idea behind the new campaign, Saujanya Shrivastava, Chief Marketing Officer, MakeMyTrip, elaborated, “With this campaign, we are trying to shift customers from online to offline model. This is an initiative towards category strategy expansion and recruitment of new customers. This current campaign is an extension of the campaign that we have developed earlier in the year. So, from April to June, we helped the brand in registering approximately 470 per cent jump in standalone online hotel transactions. Currently, I see there is a huge headroom for growth as online hotel penetration constitutes only about 12-15 per cent of overall transactions. And I hope this campaign can excite people to fulfil their travel ambitions through MakeMyTrip.”

The brand has big plans to communicate the unique advantage of ‘Pay at Checkout’ feature. Sharing the promotional strategies, Shrivastava said, “Yes, there is a very aggressive TVC campaign lined up, which eventually will help us communicate why customers should come to MakeMyTrip and book hotel online. The idea is to activate every possible touch point, so we’ll be looking at channels, movies and even high property. We also planning to target India-New Zealand Test match and One Day International, apart from the aggressive and targeted outdoor campaign in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Our ad is also going to be placed in cinemas across the country. And being an active player on digital platforms, we are also looking at amplification and engagement on Twitter, Facebook, etc.”

The feature shares its similarity with ‘Cash on Delivery’ option offered by e-commerce players and that revolutionised the game. This feature will enable consumers to make 100 per cent confirmed hotel bookings online at zero advance payment and pay for their stay while checking out of the hotel. The brand, which contributes to about 68 per cent of the online flight booking market and 46 per cent to online hotel booking market, has tied up with 7,500 domestic hotels, of which 18 per cent are 4-5 star hotels, 37 per cent are 3-star hotels and 45 per cent are 1-2 star budget category hotels.

While commenting on this similarity with the COD model, Shrivastava maintained that it was a bit different. He explained, “We have two models. In the first one, the customer is not prompted to share his/her credit card details and there are no cancellation charges either. In the second one, the customer is required to share his/her credit card and in case of cancellation/ no show, the credit card details are passed on to the hotel and the customer will be charged as per the hotel’s cancellation policy. This is to avoid/ counter fraud bookings and realising that a no-show is the biggest pain-point for a hotel, we have put checks and balances in place.”

Shrivastava had joined the organisation around two years back and since then, he believes that there have been many transformations in the hotel booking business. “There are two big changes,” he noted. “First one would be adoption of mobile apps. We are finding more customers coming on our application and transacting. Now, 75 per cent of our hotel bookings happen on mobile app. The second change is that online hotel markets are now opening up. So, it is a very encouraging time. Also, daily travel has now become a part of lifestyle unlike what was considered to be just once in a year. Everybody now has a travel ambition.”

He further said that MakeMyTrip is covering domestic hotels in the first phase, while in the second phase, which is slated to be initiated by October-end, they plan to scale this to international hotels.