Believe it or not, 97% of Indian travellers want to reserve their hotels online, according to a study by MakeMyTrip.
The study was conducted online with 3,000 customers of MakeMyTrip, so the 97% number shouldn't be a surprise, but the primary objective of the survey was to understand more about hotel reservation patterns among Indian travellers.
Hotel reservation trend
The graph below highlights the percentage of travellers who book hotel online, how hotels influence in deciding a destination, and the role of last minute hotel deals.
Note how 10% of MakeMyTrip's hotel reservations are now from mobile.
Hotel reservation concerns
Interestingly, payments top the list of concerns when a traveller books hotel online.
Web leads all the way in hotel selection
Look at the vast difference between the dependence of hotel selection on web or review sites versus traditional medias like newspaper/TV. Looks like web is where the buck stops for hoteliers.
Key deciding factors in hotel booking
Its not about the brand and amenities when it comes to deciding a hotel - rather it's a focus on price, location and service of the hotel which matters to Indian travellers. Indeed, only 14% of Indians are hotel brand conscious.
The study shows that price is the key deciding factor for Indians booking a hotel in India (49%) or overseas (60%).
Indians prefer hotel location (49%) over customer service (44%) when booking an overseas hotel, while service (49%) triumphs over location (46%) when booking in India.
Overall
MakeMyTrip has 10,000 hotels in India and another 70,000 hotels internationally (mostly in Asia).
The company's revenue from hotels and packages business increased by 55.2% to $48.6 million in the quarter ended December 31, 2012.