Internet Hotel Reservations Untangling the Web of Confusion

Vivek Nayak explains how bookings over the Internet have a long way to go in India

If you are a business traveller in India and you are asked to travel to an unknown city for the first time …the very first question you would ask yourself is, ‘Where would I stay?’ Usually, you would ask someone. More experienced colleagues perhaps. Or maybe your travel agent? After giving a lengthy explanation about your requirements, you would have to rely on a third party's understanding of your requirements to recommend a hotel. And then there's next step. How would you manage to make a booking? First, you have to hunt down the telephone number, make a few STD calls and when you finally get through to a hotel, ask about room availability and rates. Then comes the long process of negotiating, sending faxes, photocopies of your credit card, etc. By the end of it, you'd rather stay back. Let's face it, making a hotel room reservation over the Internet in India can be a nerve wracking experience and can be quite stressful.

A web of confusion

These days, smart people recommend searching for a suitable hotel on the Internet. You just have to go to a popular search engine and type in the name of the city and the type of hotel you need and you'll get a shortlist of hotels to choose from. That sounds great. But try doing it yourself and you'll realise it is not as easy as it sounds. The list that is thrown up by the search engine does not contain any hotel sites. All the sites thrown up are of Travel Agents who offer all kinds of deals at various hotels. No way of knowing who is a genuine agent and who isn't. Furthermore, there is no help in terms of choosing the right hotel for your requirement. For instance, if you have a conference in the business district of the city, you have to be extra careful to ensure that the hotel you choose is not at the other end of the city, two hours away by road. What about the details of the kind of room, the amenities, the services in the package etc. No mention. What about the availability of the room? Most agent websites or even a hotel website (if you are lucky to find one) say - 'send us a mail and we will get back to you in 24 hours'. 24 hours! You are scheduled to travel in 36 hours. You scream out in frustration. And look for alternatives and back-ups. You send out 10 different requests and finally choose the one who either gets back the quickest or maybe the one with the most correct information about the hotel property. And pray that when you land up at the hotel, there is no wide gap between expectation and reality.

Meeting your expectations

When it comes to the hotel booking on the Internet here is what your wish list would look like:

• I should be able find a hotel that meets my requirement with a click.
• I should get honest information about important things like the hotel property, the room type and the services that I will be paying for.
• I should get a fair deal based on real market value.
• I should get room availability status with a click of a button.
• I should get a confirmed reservation, be able pay online and be done with the whole thing in a flash.
• When I get off the plane or the train, a car should be waiting to pick me up.
• My printed receipt should allow me to demand for and get what I have paid for when I finally land up at the hotel.

Sounds like a pipe dream? Not really, if you think about it for a minute. It all boils down to someone giving you credible information, allowing access to the hotel inventory and empowering you, the customer to buy online directly.

Hoteliers need to wake up...

Who is the most credible entity to deliver an honest picture about the hotel's property and the services it offers? What better source is there other than the official hotel website itself. Who would have the most up-to-date information about the room availability? Once again, the official hotel website. Finally, if one pays heed to the reams of international research available, which is the one source that most online customers would prefer to purchase a hotel room from? Yes, it is the official hotel website. So clearly, the hotel has the best opportunity to make the most of its Internet presence. And yet going by what is reflected on the Internet today, hotels in India are clearly not doing enough to grab the initiative. So what has been keeping the hoteliers from giving you a pleasant, trouble-free and direct reservation facility?

Get proactive

Internet hotel booking is still in a nascent stage in India. The slow progress is partly due to historic reasons, partly due to the hotelier's mindset and partly due to economic reasons. First, let's look at the prevalent practice. Historically, the hotels have depended on the agent channels to bring in the bacon. With the arrival of the Internet, the agents have been quick to spot and seize the opportunity to service customers through the Internet and continue bringing guests to the hotels. Indeed, the agents are thriving because the Internet has brought down their customer acquisition cost as well as the administrative costs, but the commission structure with the hotel still remains the same. Some hotels like The Leela Group have seen the opportunity and have moved by taking their inventory online. Other hotel groups such as the Choice Group, ITC Fortune Park Group and the ITC Welcom Heritage Group have begun integrating a real time online hotel reservation system into their websites. Smart hoteliers have begun to realise that they can pass on a part of the agent commission as a discount to the direct online customer and strengthen the relationship with customers.

Drawbacks of the current process

Today, most hoteliers and their agents take the easy route. They put up a website and ask customers to send mail requesting for rooms. And they revert after about 24 hours with a status of room availability. The question is, do you like waiting for 24 hours for a reply? Obviously, you would like to maximise the chances of getting a room. So you spread your options and make multiple requests at multiple hotels. You finally choose, depending on the level of your desperation, the one who gets back the quickest. This is bad news, not only for you but also for the hotel. The other hotels have not only lost a sale, but without a firm financial commitment from the customer's end, the hotel has had to service a flood of non-productive room requests. During a high demand season, that could prove to be very costly for the hotel.

To counter this, hotels are nowadays giving customers a real time availability status while getting a financial commitment from the customer in advance to ensure that the hotel gets genuine reservations. For example, The Leela uses ResAvenue, a multi-lingual, multi-currency software solution that allows customers to book a room instantly from anywhere in the world in a language of their choice. In such a system, you can see room availability, book and pay online with your credit card or Internet banking account and get a printed confirmation instantly. You can make special requests such as airport / railway station pickups, wheelchair facility, etc.

The corporate traveller need not negotiate or confirm a special rate every time he or she travels. Pre-negotiated rates are fed into the system and the corporate customer just has to log in with his name and password and get a room at the pre-decided rate automatically. No haggling, no bargaining. As and when, more and more hotels implement such a solution, things should get easier and easier for the business traveller.

Prepare to be spoilt rotten

So where are we headed with Internet Bookings and what's in it for you? With the growth of direct access hotel bookings through the Internet, there will be a huge opportunity for travellers to strike personal relationships with the hotels. Remember, a huge amount of data about yourself, your requirements and even your idiosyncrasies, will rest in the hotel database. There will be a natural growth in competition among the hotels for your business. Internationally, hotel websites have begun putting up the best Internet Rate. This is to impress upon the customers that no matter what rates the agents may offer, the best room rate will always be available on the hotel website. Remember, the hotel room is a highly perishable commodity. To improve its average room rate (ARR), the hotel would rather give the room away on a discount than let it go empty. Naturally the person who is most likely to benefit is the regular customer with whom the hotel has an ongoing relationship. So as a loyal customer, expect to be pampered and flooded with attractive packages and offers by email. Expect room and package upgrades based on your relationship. Expect schemes like the frequent customer point rewards. The hotel who manages to use the data better by customising its hotel experience will come out as the winner.

(Vivek Nayak is Chief Information Officer at Avenues, the company which has launched ResAvenue: the Internet Reservation Engine and Online Payment Gateway Solution for the hospitality industry)