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Gurgaon-based online travel agency (OTA) and a travel search engine, Yatra.com, plans to launch homestay accommodation at about 14 leisure destinations and eight business centres of the country next month.
With players like Oyo rooms, Stayzilla and Zo rooms operating in the market, leisure travellers have somewhere started finding resolutions to their travel problems.
With an emphasis to boost tourism in India, even the Ministry of Tourism (MoT) is leaving no stone unturned. In last one year, the government had sanctioned nearly $60 Mn (INR 400 crore) for various tourism circuits.
Catching up with the travel industry, OTAs have been dominating the travel segment for quite some time with players like Makemytrip, Yatra.com, cleratrip.com, Expedia.com and more.
However, with the changing consumer behaviour and pattern of stays, homestay service is attracting instant success, said Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO of Yatra.com.
He added that leisure travellers do not prefer to spend a lot on stay and these travellers are a large number. Hence, homestays will catch on fast with these travellers, wherein Yatra will ensure certain standard of service and quality.
For now, Yatra will have its homestays service offered in Jaipur, Mumbai, Goa, Chennai, Chandigarh, Ahmedabad, Munnar, Pune, Udaipur, Delhi, Cochin, Bengaluru, Ooty, Kolkata, Mysore, Hyderabad, Srinagar, Nainital, Rishikesh, Coimbatore, Shimla and Manali.
For the initiative Yatra has added Travelguru’s team of about 2,000 people to get in touch with the property owners. The company will provide assistance to the owners of the accommodation to ensure a certain standard of their properties and also arrange funding for homeowners to help them upgrade their homestays.
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