The budget room aggregator Vista Rooms is planning to raise a whopping amount of $10 million as part of Series A to expand into segments like homestays, hostels and student accommodation.

“Having raised an angel round through HNIs, we are now ready for Series A funding. But the market sentiment is low. We have to wait and watch before we can go in for raising money which is going to be about $ 10 million,” said Ankita Sheth, Co-Founder, Vista Rooms.

The startup is open to experimenting new categories such as resorts, Havelis and service apartments. With 800 rooms to its name, the startup plans to extend its services beyond homestays.

“We have looked into segments like hostels and student accommodation. Hostels are about building communities and are a different business to handle than budget rooms. Even student accommodation is a different market but we have done a pilot in Pune. These are long stays than the typical budget hotels and have to handled differently,’’ added Sheth.

They have been said to be in an engagement with Cox and Kings and Thomas Cook to tap into the corporate market. Which means they would be attracting corporate customers by selling their rooms on these players’ online portal.

“We are into inventory sharing with the offline players since their market is huge. Through their online platform we will access their offline corporate clients,’’ she added.

In the case of Thomas Cook, the company has reached out to its corporates through their B2B platform. However, Vista Rooms has no plans to discount the low-end properties below INR1000 per night through offline travel companies. The average price of their rooms sold through offline portals would be upward of INR2000 and intend to avoid deep discounting as the fellow online players would submerge themselves into to gain consumers.

Given that MakeMyTrip and Goibibo have stemmed from online budget aggregators and the need to tap the offline market is an imperative move.

Source: The Hindu Business Line

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Budget hotel aggregator Vista Rooms has built a strong presence in the Indian market in a very short duration. Starting with a handful of properties less than a year ago, now they have got north of 800 properties across 80 cities in India. Unlike other budget hotel aggregators in India, they have primarily focused on Tier 2 and Tier 3 as the accommodation problem is more serious in those cities. Now the start-up is crossing international borders and setting foot in the Sri Lankan market.

With the plan to build the largest branded accommodation in Sri Lanka, they announced the launch yesterday with 200+ properties spread across more than 25 cities. Adhering to the ‘luxury at low budget’ model, the hotel properties in Sri Lanka will also offer similar amenities like complimentary breakfast, free Wi-Fi and concierge services. The properties in Sri Lanka include boutique hotels, guesthouses, service apartments, villas and homestays.

Commenting on the development, Amit Damani, Co-Founder & Head of Growth at Vista Rooms said that “We are happy that Sri Lanka has warmly received Vista Rooms and the response we have received from hotel owners and customers has been very positive. Our expansion plans have been driven by our customer needs who have reached out to us expressing interest in certain international destinations. The past long weekend itself we received over 25 bookings through an emailer we sent to a select group of prior customers.”

Sri Lanka being similar to India in a number of ways was a logical first choice for the brand and they plan to expand to 5 more countries by the end of this year. They haven’t revealed any specific plans yet but expect them to look at the South-East Asia next. It is worth a mention that earlier this year OYO Rooms, the largest player in budget hotel space, announced its entry into Malaysia and might consider expanding into more markets in future.

Ankita Sheth, Co –Founder and Head of Alliances & Partnerships said “We are working with our hand-picked hotels to change the perception of budget hotels. We want travelers, coming to Sri Lanka, from all across the world to no longer worry whether their bathroom will be hygienic or whether the AC will be working when they stay at a budget hotel.”

While Indian budget hotel aggregators are looking at the possibilities outside India, similar brands from South-East Asian countries are considering an entry into the highly competitive Indian market. It will be interesting to see how things turn out as more players with strong presence in their domestic markets step into other markets to grow.

The Vista Rooms properties in Sri Lanka can be viewed on www.vistarooms.lk

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Women are an integral part of any social setting. They nurture, strengthen and serve as the backbone of the family and community. Technically there doesn’t go a day where we aren’t thankful enough for their unparalleled and selfless service. 8^th March marks the International Women’s Day when plight and achievements of women all over the world are celebrated. A lot is being done and a lot could be done to create gender parity as commonplace phenomena. Women have really proved their mettle in almost all spheres of politics, sports, education etcetera. They’ve been there, done that.

The entrepreneurial space is expanding like the universe. Women too are outdoing themselves, scaling sky-scrapping heights and their achievements are no longer secluded from the world. Here’s a list of few female entrepreneurs that have stirred the travel tech space alike and have made things work for them.

Sakshi Vij

Sakshi is a well-known name in travel landscape. She founded the self-driven car rental service, Myles, in 2013. Starting out, she worked as an advisory for Finoble Advisors and brought new business opportunities on the table. She later joined CIPL in 2007, as a marketing executive. Her industry acumen and skills saw Sakshi rise up the ladder to become Executive Director at CIPL. It is this when Sakshi spearheaded Myles campaign and made this brand a self-recognising name in the travel industry. Myles has today grown from 14 cars and three locations to over 1200+ cars and 250 locations with a presence in 21 Indian cities. It is the fastest growing self-drive mobility brand in the category.

Website: Myles

Ankita Sheth

Ankita Sheth is a Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships for Vista Rooms. Vista Rooms is an entrepreneurial venture under budget hotel aggregator segment. Before starting Vista Rooms a year ago, Ankita played an instrumental role in handling operations in Mumbai for OYO Rooms in their nascent stage which later came to be essential in its growth trajectory. Vista Rooms collates 700+ properties across 80+ locations pan India and is a provider of budget hotels in tier II and tier III market. She is an avid traveller and prefers to check on every accommodation herself before setting service standards. She is also a Social cause enthusiast who has been associated with Anna Hazare, Red Cross and a bunch of other NGO’s.

Website: Vista Rooms

Piya Bose

A corporate lawyer by profession, Piya Bose Desai found her dead end desk job entirely boring and founded Girls on the Go, a travel community that caters to solo female travellers. Over the years, she spent considerable time in Asia, Europe and USA. Piya started Girls on the Go with the objective of creating a platform where women could join in to check out a new destination and also be themselves. After quitting her full time job, she turned to a travel writer and researcher. She has written for prestigious publications like Outlook Traveller, Hindustan Times and websites like Makemytrip.com. She travels frequently within India and abroad, trying to pick up stories about places that are lesser known.

Website: Girls on the Go

Shefali Walia

Shefali Walia founded WeTravelSolo as a shout out to all the solo travellers without having to worry about the safety. She completed her business majors from Amity Business School and serves as a Business and Marketing Strategist to many start-ups and growth stage companies. WeTravelSolo focuses on giving the solo traveller the privacy he demands and the safety he needs. It is an online Solo Traveller Community that organizes special interest tours to cater the need of the privacy seeking individual traveller. These tours are specially designed by experienced trip crafters/ experts set on various themes to give a company of like-minded strangers in the safest and most comfortable environment possible.

Website: WeTravelSolo

Sudeepta Sanyal

The Blueberry Trails was founded by  Sudeepta Sanyal in 2010. She left her day job at 26 to commit to her travel bug and cater to group travellers to exotic destinations. Coming from an Army background, she is a highly centred individual and owes credit to her upbringing for her go-getter attitude. The Blueberry Trails currently have 42 countries, 400 destinations and 4000 itineraries on their portfolio. Growing at a 150% YOY, they add that extra bit to your holiday by adding local experiences, boast of a vetted on-ground team and will go all the way to make your travel hassle free.  They are currently working on an Automated Trip Planning model to reduce the turnaround time for Itinerary planning.

Website: The Blueberry Trails

These entrepreneurs set a great example for others to follow. We would love to hear your stories. Write to us at editor@travhq.com.

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Try finding quality accommodation on a low budget and chances are you will be lost in the maze of results which a search engine like Google will throw up. The highly fragmented budget hotel segment is at war and you have all kind of players vying in for the attention of the customer.

You know what you are booking in case of a flights, trains or high end luxury hotels but with the highly fragmented budget hotel industry, you really don’t know what to expect. The problem isn’t lack of options but an overly crowded segment. The reviews you find on OTAs and metasearch websites like TripAdvisor help to some extent but only in case of destinations that are frequented by travellers. In case of Tier2 and Tier3 cities, the problem magnifies to another level. Hotel chains that invest in their own properties stay away from these cities because of the low ROI and it is hard to find reviews for the hotels that are already present there.

Vista Rooms is a budget hotel aggregator offering rebranded and standardised hotel rooms

Earlier this year during SATTE Mumbai West, we met a new hotel chain aggregator called Vista Rooms. Similar to other hotel chains that have come up recently, they partner with individual hotel properties, standardise them and offer them tools & support to provide high quality accommodation at low prices. However the biggest differentiator lies in their approach. While most other chains are investing heavily in metro cities, they are focusing primarily on Tier2 and Tier3 cities where there are hardly any quality budget hotels.

We got a chance to have a conversation with Ankita Sheth, one of the co-founders of Vista Rooms and she shared Vista Rooms’ vision with us.

You can book a stay for your next vacation with Vista Rooms here. You can follow them on Facebook and Twitter for more updates and attractive offers.

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So then the first day of SATTE turned out to be an exciting one with number of conversations involving industry stakeholders. We have been waiting for SATTE for months because such events offer great opportunity to meet innovative people from the travel industry verticals. Day 1 witnessed an impressive level of participation from various businesses and visitor footfalls. Among the exhibitors were budget hotel aggregators, domestic and international destinations, travel agencies and few technology startups as well. Here is a photologue of some of the exhibitors from the event.

Detailed event report and fact-file will follow soon.

Vista Rooms is a budget hotel aggregator offering rebranded and standardised hotel rooms

Maharashtra Tourism had multiple representatives promoting different aspects of tourism in the state

The representative of J&K Tourism was very happy to share how the state plans on using social media to promote lesser known destinations in-order to boost tourism

The Tourism Malaysia representatives talked about their activities on digital to promote their ‘Year of festivals’

FXKart allows you to get foreign currency online with multiple dealers bidding to offer the best price

This was just a quick roundup of some of the exhibitors at the event. Follow our Twitter feed for the latest updates on SATTE.

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