It’s observed that the hospitality market in India is not much explored as compared to other countries. According to the report, only 25% hotel booking are done online, while more than 59% is still done through offline channels. Albeit, the hotel segment in the country is highly divided and there is a huge chance for online intermediaries to grow their category.

The world- renowned hotel groups of India, such as Taj, Oberoi, Le-Meridian. ITC and many more have already made impressive position in the market, so to give them cut-throat competition, other international hotel brands have a good chance to expand their business for a budget hotels as most of the people looking for this. In the report, it is found that 18% of the online hotels bookings are controlled by online agencies (OTA) while the remaining 7% is done through hotel brand websites.

Day by day, the usage of the smartphone and internet are increasing that leads to a significant growth of online hotel booking. It’s not surprising to see travel companies reporting a lion’s share of their business coming through hotel bookings and hotel chains to rolling out mobile-friendly websites and beefing up their online presence to woo Indians.

The study revealed that MakeMyTrip dominates the OTA hotel booking segment with close to 25% market share, followed by Goibibo with 18.9% and Booking.com with 12.2 %. Currently, MakeMyTrip has 27,500 hotels and guesthouses in India and 255,000 hotels outside the country listed on its platform.

Mr. Rajesh Magow, CEO-India, MakeMyTrip stated,

“The online hotel booking category is witnessing great customer traction and is being propelled by smartphone penetration, affordability and choice”.

As of now, OTA is leading the online hotel booking segment as it offers higher margins of 10-15% as compared to just 5% from online air booking.