Booking.com Builds Its Own Payments and SME Business Travel Offer to Win India

Booking.com is trying to take a larger share of the Indian traveler's wallet, which matters for hoteliers because it would put the platform in charge of more of the payment flow on every booking.

Santosh Kumar, Booking.com's regional head for South Asia, told Skift that winning India over the long term means being "more relevant to the India booker". The company is best known in the country for hotel and stay bookings, and is now branching out into payments and small-business travel, a market where local rivals led by MakeMyTrip dominate domestic travel.

What Booking.com is changing

• Own payments system. Booking.com is collecting payments directly rather than relying on pay-at-hotel, and lets hotels and homestays choose daily, weekly or monthly payouts.
• Self-service business travel. A tool launched earlier this year targets startups and small and mid-sized companies. It deliberately skips pre-negotiated corporate rates and sells public platform prices, a different model from established corporate travel companies.
• Cross-selling. The aim is to keep customers returning for both business and leisure trips.

Competition

The segment is already contested. MakeMyTrip reported 79,000 active myBiz small-business users, up 19% year over year, alongside Yatra's Travel Pro and Cleartrip's Out of Office.

Kumar also downplayed the effect of Middle East tensions on Indians traveling abroad, saying he does not think it is changing the aspiration of the Indian traveler.

Note: the source article is partly paywalled; this summary covers the portion available at publication.