Our domestic bookings have surpassed international, says Angel Mancas

A Dutch company, Booking.com claims to be the biggest online travel agency (OTA) globally and has been in operations for two decades now. The brand has been present in the Asia-Pacific region for 11 years and its India operations were launched in 2012. Angel Mancas, vice president and managing director - A-Pac, Booking.com, in an interview with Ashish K Tiwari, talks about the company's India business, the ongoing tussle between hotel asset owners and OTAs and so on. 

How has the journey been in India?

India is a very important market for us. In the past years, we have grown very fast and at very healthy rates. We also expect that the momentum will continue in the future. We now have four offices in India, one each in Bengaluru, Kolkata, Delhi and Mumbai. The India operations employs 100 people and the number in the Asia-Pacific region is around 2,000 employees. Asia-Pacific today is a key engine of growth for Booking.com as a whole and in that piece, India is playing a very important part not only because of the volume, but also the potential.

Do people use your marketplace for hotels or there are other services as well?

Accommodation facilities form a major part of our business. So people come to us looking for different types of accommodation, anywhere across the world and at across price ranges. That's the requirement we cater to and that's what we want to deliver. Majority of our supply has been traditional hotels, but we've worked with alternative types of accommodation since the very beginning. Lately, we have seen that there is a growing interest in customers to go for alternative accommodations like apartments, guest houses, hostels and even boathouses. We are also adding attractions to our platform and have rolled them out in over 100 destinations/cities. Basically, it includes any event/activity you want to do after landing in the city/your destination. In the future, we are also planning on expanding transportation and other products. But today, a majority of our business is accommodations.

Across the globe, the hotel industry is concerned about how OTAs are structuring their business. In fact, hotels are pushing for direct bookings on their respective websites and renegotiating commission rates with OTAs.

It's hard for me to speak from the hotel chains' perspective. I have also been a hotelier in the past. I can imagine that hotels want to track as much direct traffic as possible from a business perspective. At the same time, I believe that Booking.com is here to deliver incremental traffic for chains or for properties, which is going to be very hard for them. For example, bringing customers from Brazil or from Argentina to India, this is something we can do because of our reach. In any other way, it could be very expensive or it could be quite complicated for the properties to do it on their own. We are also trying to deliver the best services for customers that the properties can not deliver. For example, we have our customer service centre offering assistance in 43 languages. We're avoiding the operational hassles for the accommodation partners. I see that we complement each other. 

How big is your user base?

We don't disclose user numbers. However, more than 1.55 million room nights are reserved (globally)on our platform every day. Worldwide, we have over 28 million listings. In India, we've almost 50,000 properties listed with us.

Do you also acquire room nights in bulk from hotels?

We directly contract the suppliers, be it the hotels, apartments, house owners and this is our business model. They enter into a contract with us directly and we don't have any third-party involvement. The accommodation partners put the room inventory at prices they want to sell them. They also decide when they want to make the rooms available on the platform. We leave all those responsibilities on the accommodation partner.

Is there a minimum requirement criteria to be listed on your platform?

We give equal opportunities to a hotel chain/large accommodation partners as well as individual and private properties. At the end of the day, we believe that our ranking is based on the preference of the customers. We want to be as relevant as possible to the customer and we believe in transparency and total equal opportunity for our partners.

Other players have been influencing pricing by deep discounting/cash backs, etc.

Commissions paid by the accommodation partners for bookings through our platform is the only revenue stream for us. It essentially is a very low marketing cost, paid to us after we've brought them business. We don't even collect payments from the users. Our global average commission is 15% for any transaction value that we generate from the total amount that the customer is paying at the property. Our accommodation partners are free to offer prices they feel will deliver profits for their respective properties. Our highest-performing properties also have the option to participate in our Preferred Partner Programme. This, only if they meet our performance criteria because we ultimately only showcase top-performing properties to ensure a great consumer experience. This means that properties can test increasing their position on our site for an additional commission. But that's the same for any type of property.

Are Indians using Booking.com mainly for international accommodations?

We have seen a shift in that trend over the past few years. Indeed, when we started in the country, international/outbound was important. But the more people started using us, they realised we also have domestic properties. In the last three-four years, we have seen a huge spike in growth in domestic transactions. So basically, you can see a lot of Indian customers going to Indian destinations and using Booking.com. I am not allowed to give out exact percentages, but it is higher domestically than international