With the incoming of multiple big shots in the travel space, the scope for small time travel agencies became restricted only to catering the travel queries of local people in the city. Their outreach became limited which also led to the need for a Global platform which enabled equal opportunity in the ever expanding travel space.
The addressable market in India today is about One Million Room nights per day available, but if we are looking at global market we will be looking at a USD 100 billion opportunity in distribution.
The Global Distribution System
AxisRooms offers breakthrough technology solutions in the arena of hotel business management and online booking. It provides platform for accommodation ranging from hotels to homestays to resorts and others. It is India’s first GDS ( Global Distribution System) technology provider for travel related services.
There are few other players who provide similar solutions on the online distribution module like Maximojo, Rategain, Ratetiger & Siteminder but they only work towards providing distribution to Online Channels. For distribution towards offline channels, there have been GDSs like Amadeus, Galileo but they are too complex for mass market and obviously comes with huge distribution costs. AxisRooms position themselves as a single player that provides hotels with complete distribution network at a very affordable cost. Thus, small hotel managers or travel agencies can attract their target audience through a single platform and manage their inventories.
The Hotel Management
AxisRooms distributes to online travel portals. They emerged as a thoughtful innovation for solving one of the biggest pain points in hotels space, by developing Unique Hotel Exchange (HEX) mobile app, that allows hoteliers, distribution partners and guests to manage rates, track bookings, update deals & promotions anywhere, anytime!
They provide technology backed channel management system and cure the bane of distribution in the hotel industry. AxisRooms manages Request for Proposal (RFP). They manage common pool inventory and rate parity for all online and offline travel agencies. It works like a B2B marketplace for suppliers and their offline buyers to transact on a single platform.
The Thoughtful Innovators
The company was started in 2011, by Mr. Anil Kumar Prasanna and Mr. Ravi Taneja, both having more than a decade + experience in the Travel Commerce which are both offline and online. They have been parties on both sides of business either as a hotel / tour operator / online travel agencies. Anil looks at aspects of Product Development, Execution, Market Implementation, Strategy and Partnerships.
The idea of Axis Rooms was started to solve the issues in online booking. Independent Hotels were not inclined to technology, as it was too expensive and also had complicated platforms (involves specialised training to employees). Problem was big not only for hotel partners even for online travel agencies and all parties involved in hotel commerce. Though Anil has worked with large travel companies, he still felt there were issues to source real time inventory or even their bookings were bounced by hotels due to the communication delays of selling the room. The founding team of AxisRooms stepped on this issue, with few hotel partners rallied with them to solve this issue.
Their first and foremost challenge was to educate the hotels for the use of technology for the better use. They overcame those due to constant emailer on tips and opportunities to hotel partners, educating them on nuances of hotel revenue management. Rest their existing hotel partner references, competitors, distribution partners helped them to come out of this challenge.
Staying in the Game
The most important differentiation is their Business Suite Product for Hotels to explore more direct business from their corporates & travel agents. Their current team size is 60, and they have their presence in about 200 location in India. Today they work with around 3000+ independent hotel partners just in India and power about 5000+ room nights of sales through their platform every day.
They look forward to keep learning new things every day and understand the need to listen to their clients to make a successful product. They are looking to gain some international presence too, and have a handful number of clients in Latin America, Indonesia, Maldives and UAE. They have powered transactions worth 35 crores in month of July 2015 alone. The success for the growth of hotel business is 100% automation of all bookings, today even largest & successful hotel chains have only 75% automation and they give the same technology capability to independent hotels to move their business to the north.
