In this age of e-commerce, the online travel industry has emerged as a huge potential market. Sites like Makemytrip, Yatra, and TravelmartIndia have gained in popularity in recent years. In the given scenario, one would expect booking hotels through travel sites to be quite a smooth sail. At least, thats what Ronnie Roy and many others thought before they had some unsavory experiences.

Roy job takes him to places. Though he has always been fond of traveling, his frequency of travel has gone up in the last couple of months. Unfortunately, so have his unpleasant experiences of booking budget hotels through popular travel sites.

Woeful Experience
If you get a hotel booking done and finish the stay without a glitch, you could consider yourself lucky. Shelling out extra bucks at the time of checking out or checking in; room availability in hotels or the lack of it even after having made the booking; quality of hotels or security issues at the time of booking it offlineone wonders if the popular travel sites are giving their consumers a fair deal?

Roy points out two instances where he ended up paying more than the actual amount quoted on the popular travel site, Makemytrip.com. Roy was traveling with a female colleague to Shimla, and was expected to reach after midnight. The hotel authorities had been informed about this. Although past experiences have not been too great with travel sites, he was hoping it would be smoother this time around. The office had booked two rooms, but to my utter surprise when we reached Shimla at 12.30 am, we were told only one room was available. Even after showing the confirmation slip for two rooms, we had to wait for over half an hour. After such a long and tiring journey, waiting was torturous, to say the least. Though Roy finally got the rooms, it came at a higher price.

In another incidence, the invoice for the payment he made online at the time of booking a hotel in Goa never reached the hotel during the three days he stayed there. He rues, Its been three weeks now, and the statement of the online payment has still not reached the hotel. So I still dont have the bill from the hotel. Add to this the quality of the hotel! In the name of budget hotel booking, the basic amenities available really looked on a budget: Having an STD line connection was a far cry, the hotel didnt even have a local line available, Roy adds.

He was simply appalled. Not only did he face an embarrassing situation in office, following up with hotel people was too much of an effort, even though he wasnt really on the wrong side of the fence. Roy wasnt able to submit the travel statement on time. It has been sheer harassment for me, he says, I followed up a couple of times, but they havent got back to me.

Sheshu Kapoors case is another one, but with more serious implications. Sheshu works for a media firm and travels extensively. On two occasions, in less than a gap of six months, he got his hotel bookings done through Makemytrip.coms toll-free number. While getting through the number was not such a great problem, the guy who took down all the details, apart from my credit card number, expiry date, also wanted my CVV number.

I felt I was taking a risk when I gave out my CVV number, as my credit card details can be easily misused, says Kapoor. For starters, CVV is usually an authentication number on the back of your card for any Internet transaction, and according to online norms, is not to be given on a tele-transaction.

On another occasion, Kapoor got a booking done for a hotel in Kovalam. Everything seemed fine till the time he reached the hotel. He was shocked to see that the hotel where he got the booking done was still under construction.

What They Say
On being asked what the complaint redressal mechanism is like for handling such cases, Makemytrips CEO Deep Kalra says, It really depends on the nature of the complaint. If its got to do with a change in fare, we investigate it, though it is a rare occurrence. Hotel room bookings is a more serious thing that we immediately try to sort out, by getting back to the consumer.

However, Kalra claims that these complaints are really infrequent, we might get one in about 4-5 months. Incidentally, budget hotel booking, which has a range of Rs 1,500-3,000 rooms, contributes almost 70-75% of hotel bookings on this popular website.

The online travel industry, in fact, has been driving the growth in the B2C e-commerce industry. The total market size of the online travel industry in 2006-07 was close to Rs 5,500 crore and in 2007-08 is expected to be Rs 7,000 crore. The total e-commerce industry in India is expected to be Rs 9,210 crore.

Therefore, considering the importance and value of the online travel sector in the e-commerce firmament, such shocking gaffes can be a serious dampener and even hurt the industry in the long run.

Even though the market speaks volumes about the potential, there is still a lot of catching up to be done with some of the other international websites like Ratestogo.com, says a regular user of travel sites. Roy has also been regularly booking through Ratestogo for hotels in cities across the globe like Dublin, Vienna, Paris, London, Zurich, among others but has yet to face problems like their Indian counterparts.

Another popular site, Yatra.com put off Rohit Patel when he got a hotel reservation done at Shimla two months ago. Rohit says, I tried to find hotels in Shimla through Yatra.com and decided to book a resort. His efforts of booking through Yatra reflected some error, after which he received a call from the Yatra helpdesk. I asked them to do the hotel reservation for March. I did note the transaction ID, however, even after a week, I didnt receive any e-mail confirmation. On calling the customer support to recheck, he found out that the booking was for the month of February.

I was stunned, the date was over when I called them. Repeated attempts to get my money back has fallen on deaf ears.

Surinder Malhotra too tried out Yatra.com when he got his bookings done for a hotel in Srinagar. Malhotra did the booking just a day before his arrival in Jammu & Kashmir, in the peak tourist season. The booking wasnt confirmed, and he got a call at 11 pm from the hotel that there werent any rooms. Malhotra panicked, and his vacation looked almost over even before it started.

Though Dhruv Shringi from Yatra.com admits that in peak seasons these issues might come up, but chances of something like this happening is one in a hundred cases. We do the best we can to get the customer booked on the next best hotel.

Interestingly, it is not about any particular travel site, such instances are plenty with the others as well. Its simply a question of quality of service offered. Its time Indian travel sites put in faster and more efficient complaint redressal systems in place at a time when the online travel market is getting bigger by the day. Or the time may soon come when even domestic travelers would make their domestic bookings through global sites.

(Names of customers have been changed on request)

Urvashi Kaul
urvashik@cybermedia.co.in

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