Ixigo, an online travel search marketplace, is planning to shift its focus towards online hotel booking segment, which every other player in the online travel space has entered.
While many travel portal have made efforts in the hotel booking domain, ixigo has not focused much on the segment, until now. Flight ticket bookings and advertisements drives major revenue for the startup.
Going forward, the company is planning to launch a much more evolved version of its hotel booking platform, and is expected the vertical to contribute three to four times more than it does currently.
Alok Bajpai, founder and CEO of the company says that the online hotel booking segment is still an untapped market with over 80% of hotels being booked in India through offline channels.
The ixigo team is trying to come up with a unique solution for the hotel segment product to suit customer perspective. It wants the platform to present right hotel match to the customer rather than just providing price comparisons.
ixigo, founded by Aloke Bajpai, is an online travel aggregation platform which provides information on flights, trains, cabs and hotels, among others. The company is backed by Sequoia Capital India and Fosun Kinzon Capital, among others.
It has been focused on enhancing mobile experience, which as per the claims of Bajpai, has resulted in 35 percent of the total bookings coming in from mobile applications.
Many major online travel portals, such as MakeMyTrip and Ibibo (two entities have merged business but continues to run independently) have started focusing on online hotel bookings market. Many have even started their own budget hotel chains in lure of higher margins.