The feature is currently only available in two major cities — New Delhi and Bangalore — as well as two key religious towns, Shirdi and Tirupati.
Yatra.com, one of India’s top online travel companies, recently launched ‘Flexi Stay’, a feature that aimed at disrupting the travel industry in India. Yatra Flexi Stay allows customers to book budget and premium (defined as four- to five-star establishments) hotels with anytime check-in and check-out, while only paying for the time-based usage of the room.
The feature is currently only available in two major cities — New Delhi and Bangalore — as well as two key religious towns, Shirdi and Tirupati.
This new feature benefits hotel guests and hoteliers alike. For one, by breaking down room inventory and pricing by the hour, hotel guests can choose their own check-in and check-out times. Not only that, hoteliers will also be able to free up rooms from guests that aren’t staying for the full 24 hour stretch.
Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO, had this to say about the pay-for-the-time-you-stay model, “While there is a minimum stay requirement of just four hours, Flexi Stay booking data shows that 35% users book it for a four-to-eight 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.”
Based on currently available data, this model is cheaper for guests as well. Yatra Flexi Stay’s algorithm offers pricing from INR49/hour to INR199/hour (US$0.67/hour to US$2.71/hour), depending on the hotel, which is 30% cheaper than traditional room night-based booking.
And there are plans to expand the feature also, especially for corporate customers. “Most corporate employees who travel for one night today pay for full room charges, while only utilising 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%,” Shringi explained.