What if you could experience the comforts of living at home while paying a fraction of what you would pay in a branded hotel? It is exactly what travellers to India are increasingly preferring these days instead of pricey standardised accommodation.
The popular site Airbnb offering a variety of home-stay accommodations started functioning in India in 2012 but it has so far only been able to send tourists packing to popular towns and cities. Many government tourism initiatives have tried and failed in the past to get people to open up their homes, for example, Delhi Tourism’s own Bread and Breakfast portal only lists 17 properties across the city while Punjab is still dabbling with the idea and trying to motivate people to become hosts.
The problem of insufficient alternative accommodation aggravates further in smaller cities and towns, and has remained a problem for tourists.
Budget accommodation
While Airbnb has proved an answer to standard hotels worldwide, a lesser known Indian startup called Stayzilla has quietly reached smaller towns and villages of Bharat which had largely remained off the radar. Not only that, it has also recently managed to raise another $20 million in funding to expand its operations.
So what is so different about the company from the likes of Airbnb? The answer, the company says, can be summed up in its focus on alternative budget accommodation.
With a special focus on keeping the costs low, the company has managed to pull off a risky venture of trying to get low-cost homestays and hotels in smaller cities online and tapped into a market that few believed existed in the first place.
“Stayzilla has developed a unique model which has so far brought more than 20,000 properties on the platform for booking across 4,000 towns,” its CEO and co-founder Yogendra Vasupal told Scroll.
These properties not only include hotels and homestays but also extend to jungle lodges, boat stays, serviced apartments and lodges.
Smaller cities
To illustrate, if one tries to look for an accommodation in Jalandhar city, Punjab, popular hotel site booking.com throws up eight results, makemytrip.com gives 26 properties and Airbnb gives another 25 homestay options. On the other hand, Stayzilla.com has 55 listed properties available for the same dates.
This may not hold true for all cities and dates but the important fact about Stayzilla is that smaller towns and cities contributed much more to its growth story than bigger metros.
“The long tail from the smaller cities constitutes in aggregate around 50% of our traffic pie,” Vasupal told Scroll. He added that the traffic is only an indicator of interest but most of the company’s bookings happen in smaller cities which are still under the radar for bigger portals.
“Smaller towns occupy as much as 75% of bookings happen in smaller towns and it occupies a lion’s share in our revenue stream,” Vasupal added.
Bigger fish
Even though corresponding figures for other portals aren’t available, Stayzilla can be safely termed the bigger fish in the alternative accommodation space simply because of its portfolio that is heavier on the side of smaller cities and towns.
“Accommodation in the tier 2 cities constitute 30% of our portfolio while the tier 3 cities and districts form 50% of the portfolio. Only 20% of our listings are from the major cities,” Vasupal said..
Out of these listings, the company clocked 1,00,000 room nights in all, last December. The growth rate in customers over the year, it said, has been a massive ten times.
Even though makemytrip remains the largest travel company in India in terms of volume, the company says it is fast catching up. “In the overall domestic stay market, we have jumped 4 spots over the last six months and are today at second position,” Vasupal added.
Stayzilla also took an unconventional position by deciding not to go for an app and instead focussing on making a better mobile site. The reason, Vasupal explained, is the fact that many cities have sketchy coverage to download an app, which is why they chose to develop a good mobile experience.
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The popular site Airbnb offering a variety of home-stay accommodations started functioning in India in 2012 but it has so far only been able to send tourists packing to popular towns and cities. Many government tourism initiatives have tried and failed in the past to get people to open up their homes, for example, Delhi Tourism’s own Bread and Breakfast portal only lists 17 properties across the city while Punjab is still dabbling with the idea and trying to motivate people to become hosts.
The problem of insufficient alternative accommodation aggravates further in smaller cities and towns, and has remained a problem for tourists.
Budget accommodation
While Airbnb has proved an answer to standard hotels worldwide, a lesser known Indian startup called Stayzilla has quietly reached smaller towns and villages of Bharat which had largely remained off the radar. Not only that, it has also recently managed to raise another $20 million in funding to expand its operations.
So what is so different about the company from the likes of Airbnb? The answer, the company says, can be summed up in its focus on alternative budget accommodation.
With a special focus on keeping the costs low, the company has managed to pull off a risky venture of trying to get low-cost homestays and hotels in smaller cities online and tapped into a market that few believed existed in the first place.
“Stayzilla has developed a unique model which has so far brought more than 20,000 properties on the platform for booking across 4,000 towns,” its CEO and co-founder Yogendra Vasupal told Scroll.
These properties not only include hotels and homestays but also extend to jungle lodges, boat stays, serviced apartments and lodges.
Smaller cities
To illustrate, if one tries to look for an accommodation in Jalandhar city, Punjab, popular hotel site booking.com throws up eight results, makemytrip.com gives 26 properties and Airbnb gives another 25 homestay options. On the other hand, Stayzilla.com has 55 listed properties available for the same dates.
This may not hold true for all cities and dates but the important fact about Stayzilla is that smaller towns and cities contributed much more to its growth story than bigger metros.
“The long tail from the smaller cities constitutes in aggregate around 50% of our traffic pie,” Vasupal told Scroll. He added that the traffic is only an indicator of interest but most of the company’s bookings happen in smaller cities which are still under the radar for bigger portals.
“Smaller towns occupy as much as 75% of bookings happen in smaller towns and it occupies a lion’s share in our revenue stream,” Vasupal added.
Bigger fish
Even though corresponding figures for other portals aren’t available, Stayzilla can be safely termed the bigger fish in the alternative accommodation space simply because of its portfolio that is heavier on the side of smaller cities and towns.
“Accommodation in the tier 2 cities constitute 30% of our portfolio while the tier 3 cities and districts form 50% of the portfolio. Only 20% of our listings are from the major cities,” Vasupal said..
Out of these listings, the company clocked 1,00,000 room nights in all, last December. The growth rate in customers over the year, it said, has been a massive ten times.
Even though makemytrip remains the largest travel company in India in terms of volume, the company says it is fast catching up. “In the overall domestic stay market, we have jumped 4 spots over the last six months and are today at second position,” Vasupal added.
Stayzilla also took an unconventional position by deciding not to go for an app and instead focussing on making a better mobile site. The reason, Vasupal explained, is the fact that many cities have sketchy coverage to download an app, which is why they chose to develop a good mobile experience.