Tag Archives: Booking.com

Indian travellers are more likely to pick sustainable travel alternatives that cause the least damage to the environment, revealed a recent report by booking.com. According to the report, 91% of Indian travellers desire to travel sustainably over the next 12 months. Further, 88% of the travellers also expressed that they were much more likely to pick a sustainable travel option when it was presented to them, even if they weren’t actively looking for one.

Angel Llull Mancas, Vice President & Managing Director (Asia Pacific), Booking.com, said in his keynote address at ITB Asia, that one of the things to do in the new reality is instil trust in the minds of air travellers and create content accordingly. He revealed that 87% of APAC consumers expect to make changes to the way they travel, while 60% of them increasingly use the words ‘clean’ and ‘hygiene’ in their search.

The next generation of Indian travellers – Gen Z want more adrenaline rush from their travel expeditions. A study on this group of travellers by Booking.com revealed that 75 per cent of them want an adventure experience from their travels, such as paragliding or bungee jumping and 76 per cent planning on visiting or trekking to an extreme location. Also, Gen Z have an optimistic outlook on travel, with 82% excited for all the places they’ll travel to in the future. Two in five (40 per cent) plan to have visited at least three different continents over the next ten years.

Booking.com has partnered with Air India to offer the airline’s customers access to over 28.9 million accommodation listings, including everything from homes, apartments, villas to world-class hotels and resorts from the Air India website. Stewart Jones, Regional Director – Strategic Partnerships, APAC, Booking.com said, “Air India makes it the perfect partner for us to showcase our global online accommodation offering to their domestic and international customers. As India is poised to become the third largest aviation market by 2020 with its fast-growing outbound travel market, we are happy to combine our strengths with Air India’s to deliver the best travel experience to travellers across the country.” Madhu Mathen, General Manager – Sales and Marketing, Air India said, “Booking.com’s global reach and unique accommodation offerings is a key reason we chose the online accommodation platform as one of our first accommodation partner. As a member of the world’s largest airline alliance – Star Alliance, Air India has passengers that are globe-trotters. Partnering with Booking.com enables us at Air India to provide our customers a broad & unique variety of accommodation options in any city we fly them to.”  

Indian start-ups Sakha Consulting Wings: Women on Wheels and Global Himalayan Expedition were awarded this year’s highest grants of €325k and €400k respectively by Booking.com. The company has announced the 10 sustainable tourism start-ups receiving scaling grants as part of its 2018 Booking Booster accelerator programme. After three weeks of workshops and intensive coaching sessions, the programme culminated in a final pitch to receive grants of up to €500k from Booking.com’s €2 million fund to help support the next stage of the startups’ projected growth. The 10 teams of finalists pitched their scaling plans to a live audience and panel of expert judges in Amsterdam. “We are delighted that two startups from India with great ideas focused on sustainable tourism were a part of the grand finale and both have received a combined total grant of €7.25 lakhs. Our aim is to build a network of like-minded organisations and individuals that are leveraging technology to create a more sustainable future for destinations worldwide,” said Ritu Mehrotra, Country Manager – India, Booking.com on the sidelines of the Booking Booster finale held at Tobacco theatre, Amsterdam. All the startups that participated in the program will receive 12 months of ongoing mentoring and coaching from a strategic mix of Booking.com experts representing all parts of the business, as well as opportunities and access to collaborate with Booking.com on potential innovation initiatives and experiments to help accelerate their future growth.

Under this partnership, all domestic and international accommodations available on Booking.com will now be available on Paytm with unique promotions and offers. The company’s latest partnership will complement its aggressive efforts to tap into this segment while enabling Booking.com to offer its wide assortment of over 1.1 million accommodation options to Paytm’s 200 million strong wallet user base. Commenting on the occasion, Abhishek Rajan, Vice President – Paytm said, “Paytm’s travel marketplace has been focused on offering a seamless experience across the widest range of booking options. Our partnership with Booking.com will help us offer our customers the choice to book from over a million accommodation options across the world at the most attractive prices.” David Peller, Director Strategic partnerships, APAC at Booking.com, added, “There’s never been a more compelling need for digital payments and the removal of friction caused by payments in ecommerce in India. As the world’s leading online accommodation platform, we’re happy to partner with Paytm to enable their customers to effortlessly select the perfect place to stay, anywhere in the world.” The online hotel booking service on Paytm has seen a major uptake in bookings since last year owing to increasing mobile penetration and adoption.

Booking.com launched its new accelerator programme, Booking.com Booster, a three week programme taking place in June 2017 in Amsterdam which will culminate in a chance to pitch for grants of up to €500,000 from Booking.com. The program is designed to identify, mentor and fund enterprising startups from around the world that are seeking to have a positive impact on the global tourism industry. As an extension of the company’s existing Booking.com Cares programme, an internal company initiative where employees partner with local NGOs on projects that help improve destinations worldwide, the goal of the new booster programme is to support startups dedicated to sustainable tourism in the following areas: protecting the environment, preserving cultural heritage and/or promoting inclusive growth in tourism that supports and develops local economies and communities. “At Booking.com, our mission is to empower people to experience more of the world. There are thousands of beautiful, unique destinations to explore in every corner of the globe, but that’s not something we should take for granted. Through Booking.com Booster, we want to help ventures in sustainable tourism accelerate their growth in order to maximise the impact they can have globally. By identifying and funding these outstanding startups, sharing our expertise and working together, we can explore and learn how best to protect the future of the destinations we love so much so that our great-great-grandchildren can continue to enjoy them for years to come, said Gillian Tans, Chief executive Officer, Booking.com.   The three-week booster programme has been co-designed with partner organisation Impact Hub and will consist of a series of workshops, lectures, and coaching sessions with industry experts, as well as the opportunity to pitch for grants from Booking.com’s …

Mumbai, the financial and entertainment hub of India, may be set to witness an increase in domestic and international tourist footfalls as new research from Booking.com sees the city rank among the world’s top trending destinations for 2017. The data experts at Booking.com analysed the top 300 destinations based on growth in search and bookings to find the most up-and-coming places to visit in 2017. When analysed against wider trends, Mumbai has recorded increased volume of travel and higher than average growth in bookings, while  moving up  ten places among the most searched destinations relative to last year. The other top trending destinations recorded are Reykjavik in Iceland, Cairns in Australia, Savannah in US, Puerto Rico, Kyoto and Jericoacoara in Brazil. The experts at Booking.com also shed light on 8 major travel predictions for 2017 by harnessing the wealth of data, traveler endorsements, reviews, preferences and insights and inspired by industry leading understanding and innovation in e-commerce travel technology.

Booking.com has launched its new Content API for accommodations channel managers, content providers, and property management companies. These new specifications give free access for providers so they can instantly send all necessary information for building and maintaining multiple listings on Booking.com. This includes property photos and info about their facilities and policies through a direct connection– dramatically reducing the time to upload content from weeks to hours. After implementing the code required to connect to the API, providers can automatically send all information required to build new listings on Booking.com from start to finish. Previously, photo content, facilities information, and policies had to be uploaded manually on a per property basis, often taking several weeks, depending on the number of properties in a provider’s portfolio. Now with the new Content API, providers can instantly push all the relevant information for thousands of properties directly to Booking.com’s system, cutting the content upload process down from several weeks to a couple of days. “We’re constantly looking at innovative ways to create a more seamless, intuitive and automated experience for our partners,” said Remco van Zanten, Global Director of Partner Services at Booking.com. “We know that having great content is key to engaging effectively with consumers, which is not only vital to a great customer experience, but allows our partners to generate more incremental business via our platform. That’s why we’ve created a scalable solution that helps PMCs and other providers list dozens or even thousands of properties on Booking.com more quickly and at no cost.”

Booking.com has announced the initial test pilot of Booking.com for travel agents, the first iteration of a new platform designed specifically with the unique needs of travel agents in mind. The platform features a suite of easy-to-use tools that empower travel industry professionals to seamlessly make and manage accommodation reservations for their clients via Booking.com. “We’ve seen increasing numbers of travel agents using Booking.com to manage bookings for their customers,” said Bryan Batista, Senior Director of Global Partnerships at Booking.com. “We’re pleased to now offer professional travel agents a platform and a programme that has been created just for them, with the special features they need to easily book and manage reservations for their clients, as well as the choice, diversity and seamless experience that they’ve come to love and rely on from Booking.com.” Booking.com for Travel Agents is an extension of the company’s existing Affiliate Partner Programme and leverages technology and infrastructure being developed for Booking.com for Business. Travel Agents who join the platform will be eligible for similar partner benefits as all Booking.com affiliate partners.