On Wednesday Paytm added hotel bookings in their services and announced the acquisition of NightStay, which is a hotel-booking platform that is offering great deals on immediate bookings. Paytm is owned by One97 Communications, a company that is set to invest Rs. 500 crores to increase and expand their services by adding hotel-bookings in their services. In addition to that, Paytm is having plans to leverage its current deal with NightStay that will allow them to give strength to the new move. Co-founder and CEO of NightStay Nasr Khan is set to lead the newly launched category in Paytm.
With their latest addition, Paytm said that its customers can access at least 50,000 rooms from selected hotels. Eventually, Paytm plans to make these 2 million hotels from around the world, and bring availability of 50 million rooms just within the first eighteen months. Paytm is putting maximum efforts in taking over the game, its newest addition will help them compete against big hotel booking websites like Goibibo, Oyo, MakeMyTrip, and Cleartip.
Here is a list of its initial partners, Zuri, Sarovar, Treebo, Vresorts, Sterling, Ginger, and Bloomrooms are among the few. Paytm also said that they are looking forward to working with hotels, this will allow them to make the customer experience better.
Recently, Paytm became the official partners with IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) and APSRTC (Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation). Paytm’s main goal was to widen its services by allowing train, flight, and bus bookings through their application. Just a couple of weeks ago, Paytm was seen offering foreign exchange bookings for those who are traveling internationally.
In the year 2014, Paytm claimed that they sold over 60 million tickets for the train, flight, and bus bookings. This made them the leading seller of the ticket bookings.
Madhur Deora the Chief Financial Officer of Paytm said: “The launch of domestic hotel bookings is an important step forward as it will help travelers around the country conveniently plan and book their perfect trip on Paytm,”
He added: “We want to offer the broadest travel selection on our platform, and look forward to continuing our expansion with the help of our trusted travel partners.”
CEO of NightStay Nasr Khan will be the in-charge of the new addition in Paytm, he is the person who will be responsible for the new services development and overall growth.
CEO of NightStay Nasr Khan said: “I believe that my experience of this domain combined with the platform’s reach and credibility will help deliver a delightful experience to our users.”