Booking a hotel room now seems to be an activity that is no longer reserved for those who travel away from their home towns. A new category of people is booking hotel rooms in their own cities or towns to escape traffic on their way back home.
A growing number of commuters, exhausted by long hours of travel, are opting to rent a room in the nearest hotel, hopping from a traffic-choked road straight into a comfortable bed. Recent data from hospitality chain OYO (January–July 2017) shows a rise in popularity of the trend, especially in cities such as Bengaluru and Gurugram. The trend is also true for cities that see good tourist inflow, have a large number of students, or a young workforce.
A user case study revealed that 18.49% of bookings could be categorised as ‘last-minute booking’, which is essentially a booking made one hour prior to check-in. Further, 60% of the total bookings made are within the same city, and 55% of them are made the same day.
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Burhanuddin Pithawala, head – conversions, OYO, said there had been a 10% jump in the number of same day bookings this year.
Udit Jagga, a security consultant with a multinational professional services network, is from Rohtak, Haryana, and works in Gurugram. He invariably rents a hotel room two to three days a week whenever he ends up working late. “The distance between Rohtak and Gurugram is about 80 km, which takes over two hours. I will have to deal with too many issues if I have to rent a house, which I will use only half the week,” he said. He has gotten so used to the routine that he now comes prepared with a set of clothes and other necessities.
The prevalence of mobile technology, hotel companies allowing last-minute easy booking, and adequate supply to cater to the demand — an analogy similar to the cab market — are being attributed to the new trend.
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“In heavily congested cities, such as Delhi NCR and Bengaluru, people end up spending long hours on commute. If they know they are going to be spending a lot of time on the road, say when it rains and traffic snarls are inevitable, and there are hotels close by and in your budget, they will go for it,” said Mr. Pithawala.
Serving as an example for this is Akshay Chaturvedi, CEO of an education technology company who has lived in Bengaluru and New Delhi, and resorted to booking hotel rooms in both the cities. “In Bengaluru, I used to rent a room every time I had to travel to Whitefield or Electronics City as I lived on Vittal Mallya Road. Now, I travel between Rajendra Nagar in Delhi and Gurugram. If I get out of work after 9 p.m., the roads are full of trucks. Time is my money. So I just rent a room in the nearest hotel to save time,” he said. He does this at least four times a month. What does his family have to say? “My parents know I am married to my business, so they understand,” he said.