Now you can sit on an exquisite sofa relax with your family in a luxurious ambience while a qualified holiday planner helps you find a holiday package.
NEW DELHI: Now you can sit on an exquisite sofa, watch shows on an LCD television, sip tea, munch on snacks and relax with your family in a luxurious ambience while a qualified holiday planner helps you find a holiday package or a weekend getaway destination that suits your pocket.
Keen to cash in on the not-so-unorganised tour and travel agency market, the country's leading travel portal yatra.com has come up with luxury lounges to provide a hassle free holiday package booking experience.
Dhruv Shringi, co-founder and CEO of yatra.com, told, "Holidaying is a refreshing experience. However, going to a travel agency and finding out the best holiday package becomes extremely tiring for customers.
"Moreover, the ambience is not so conducive that a family can sit and plan a holiday in privacy. Hence, we decided to set up luxury lounges with an ambience resembling that of a five-star hotel lobby."
Currently, the company has two such three-month-old lounges in Delhi and Gurgaon.
Encouraged by the amazing response from customers, the firm is now planning to increase the number of the lounges to 20 by the end of March.
"We registered about 280 visitors in the first month of our opening at Gurgaon. No less than 60 queries transpired into sales, which is 25 percent and significantly higher than call centre inquiries turning into sales," Shringi said.
"During weekdays mostly housewives flock in but on weekends a lot of families visit the place. The overwhelming response prompted us to increase their numbers. By the end of February, 12 such lounges would be live and by the end of March their number will touch 20," he said.
He added that Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Mumbai, Jalandhar, Noida, Indore, Jhansi, Kanpur, Cochin, Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Jaipur would also get one high-end lounge each.
The initial investment for one such lounge is no less than Rs.2 million.
Commenting on why a majority of them are planned in tier two cities, he said, "The second rung city customers are not short of buying power. They have aspirations but no choice. We want to fill that gap.
"Also, the credit card is not the preferred mode of payment in these cities. If you mark a physical presence there, customers can pay by cash and a new market base opens for us."
Shringi claimed that the concept was unique to the country and once they established a strong foothold in the domestic market they would be open to going global.
"Countries with a large number of NRIs like the US, Britain, the Middle East and Singapore would prove beneficial for us. However, we have not zeroed in on anything yet," he said.
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