TRAVELSPICE® is an online opaque deal platform, providing value deals on hotel stays over 100 cities in India on 3/4/5 star categories.  It is India’s first opaque and map/pin-code based hotel deals platform.  With a combination of new age technology and service disruption, it strives hard to match the aspiration, affordability and availability for the customers.

Current Industry challenges

a. Challenges faced by Hotels:

• Hotel Industry occupancy is less than 60%  and the value of lost revenue due to unsold rooms is estimated to be $4 billion
• The unsold inventory also leads to lower revenue to other sales channels like Food & Beverage (F&B). The value of lost revenue on F&B is estimated to be $750 million
• Deals cannibalizing traditional sales channel, online deals causing hotel reputation tarnished among regular guests

b. Challenges faced by Customers:

• No bargaining power & customers don’t have decision-making power on price
• Match affordability with aspirations
• High cost of hotel rooms in 3/4/5 Star categories

How is Travelspice solving the above challenges?

TravelSpice’s “Quote Your Hotel Deal” platform provides non-cancellable, fully paid customers through its Hotel Manager Mobile App to Hotels in India. More than 12,000 hotels participate on this platform to sell their perishable inventory without lowering prices through other traditional sales channels.

“We went live with ‘Quote Your Deal’ platform 2 months ago and have done a good amount of bookings till date without any marketing push”- Prashant Mitta, Co-Founder

On this platform, end customers get discounts up to 70% on hotel stays including breakfast across 102+ cities. Customers get to stay in 3/4 /5 star branded category hotels at a great deal. Users can compare area, star rating and hotel prices on Google or Tripadvisor, decide the discount they want, and quote their own deal price on  “Quote Your Deal” platform.

Meet The Team Behind travelspice

Market Opportunity

• $1.8 billion expected online rooms booking in 2016
• The sector is expected to grow at the rate of 10%
• With 405 million internet users in India & online transactions to flourish in coming years
• About 415 million Indians undertake a journey every year
• Growing Short Leisure Travels to boost the demand

Future Plan

TravelSpice plans to extend the Opaque Platform across all perishable travel verticals such as buses, flights, vacation rentals etc, and targeting to  raise around $3 million by next year to fuel the growth.  In order to increase the brand awareness and reach, the team is also planning to kick off its ATL campaigns (FM, print etc).

“We compete with the likes of MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip, Yatra, Roomstonite and our endeavour is to be ahead of them to establish ourselves as the number ONE opaque deal platform in India.” – Prashant Mitta, Co-Founder

Author: Pawan Gupta

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