Yatra Introduces 'Flexi Stay' at Hotels in India

GURGAON, India and NEW YORK, October 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ --

First of its kind Hotel product offering with anytime check-in/check-out and usage-based pricing 

Yatra.com, one of India's leading online travel companies, has launched 'Flexi Stay', a unique feature, aimed at disrupting the travel industry in India. Yatra Flexi Stay, allows customers to book budget and premium (4/5 star) hotels with ANYTIME CHECK-IN / CHECK-OUT, while only paying for the time-based usage of the room. Launched in September, 2018, it is currently being offered in two of India's largest metros - New Delhi & Bangalore, and two key religious towns - Shirdi and Tirupati. The feature combines proprietary cutting-edge technology with flexible booking and pay-per-use pricing strategies, to make for a platform that is simultaneously beneficial to end consumers as well as hoteliers.

     (Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/538225/Yatra_Logo.jpg )

With Flexi Stay, Yatra is rethinking the traditional way of hotel booking by breaking down room inventory and pricing by hours (24 hour/day) to a newer 'pay for the time you stay' model rather than the traditional fixed time check-in/check-out model. Now a hotel guest can not only choose their own check in/check out dates, but also the preferred check in/check out times, while making a hotel booking.

"While there is a minimum stay requirement of just 4 hours, Flexi Stay booking data shows that 35% users book it for a 4-8 hour time period, while 65% guests book it for more than 16 hours. We are also seeing long tail users booking for 36 hours, 40, 60 hours and so on. So this is clearly much larger than just a day use market and these are users who otherwise would not have booked the hotel, but now have chosen to do so given the flexibility to customise their time and pay per use," says Dhruv Shringi, C o-Founder & CEO

Yatra Flexi Stay's unique Usage Based Pricing Algorithm offers pricing from INR 49/hour to INR 199/hour depending on the hotel and enables users to save 30% or more than traditional room night based booking. The pricing algorithm also takes into account more than 20 parameters such as full night room rate, time of booking, star category of hotel, day of booking, demand patterns for that hotel, location, city, etc. and suggests the final price to pay.

The table below illustrates how Yatra Flexi Stay compares with regular room night based booking, where the user pays for 15 hours vs. the traditional room night rate and saves 30%.

   
                                               Regular booking
                          Yatra Flexi Stay     (11 AM Standard
    Booking Details           booking             Check-in)


    Check in / Check
    out Date            22nd Oct / 23rd Oct  22nd Oct / 23rd Oct

                                               Starts at 11 AM
    Check in Time             7:00 PM             (standard)

    Check out Time            10:00 AM             10:00 AM

    Hours for which you
    STAY                      15 Hours             15 Hours

    Hours for which you
    PAY                       15 Hours          Full Night Rate

                             Rs. 2,100             Rs.3,000
                            (Price for 1         (Price for 1
    You Pay               night:Rs.3,000 )     night:Rs.3,000)
                                             None, Pays for full
    Savings                     30%                 night

Yatra will soon be offering this Flexi Stay pricing advantage to its large corporate customer base and enable meaningful savings in their travel spends. "Most corporate employees who travel for one night, today pay for full room charges, while only utilizing the room for 12-14 hours. With Flexi Stay, they can simply book a hotel from 8PM in the night till 11am the following morning and pay just 70% of the full night price. That's a direct saving of 30%," -says Dhruv Shringi, Co - Founder & CEO

Currently in India, Hotel occupancy levels are hovering around the 60% range. Yatra's flexi-stay product not only benefits customers with lower pricing but also helps increase Hotel occupancy levels in India.

"We will soon launch Yatra Flexi Stay in 100 cities with select hotel partners and will revolutionise the hotel booking process and industry in India. We are also looking to launch this product in select test markets outside India especially for our corporate customers who tend to be frequent outbound traveller," - says Dhruv Shringi, Co - Founder & CEO in his closing comments.

About Yatra Online, Inc. and Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd.  

Yatra Online, Inc. is the parent company of Yatra Online Pvt. Ltd. which is based in Gurugram, India and is India's leading Corporate Travel services provider with over 700 Corporate customers and one of India's leading online travel companies and operates the website Yatra.com. The company provides information, pricing, availability, and booking facility for domestic and international air travel, domestic and international hotel bookings, holiday packages, buses, trains, in city activities, inter-city and point-to-point cabs, homestays and cruises. As a leading platform of accommodation options, Yatra provides real-time bookings for more than 96,000 hotels in India and over 1,000,000 hotels around the world.

Customers can access Yatra in multiple ways: through a user-friendly website, mobile optimized WAP site and applications, a multi-lingual call center, a countrywide network of Holiday Lounges and Yatra Travel Express stores.

Launched in August 2006, Yatra was ranked the Most Trusted E-commerce Travel Brand in India in the Economic Times Brand Equity Survey 2016 for the second successive year, and has won the National Tourism Award for 'Best Domestic Tour Operator (Rest of India)' at the India Tourism Awards held in September 2017 for the third time in a row.

For further information, please contact: 
Manish Hemrajani
Yatra Online, Inc.
VP, Head Investor Relations
ir@yatra.com