Asmita Mukherjee - Hyderabad BookingJini, which empowers hoteliers with 360 degree online solutions, was conceived after Sibasish Mishra, Founder and CEO, BookingJini noticed that boutique hotels rely heavily on online travel agencies to drive bookings. He wanted to provide hotels with their own sales funnel and drive traffic to their websites to ultimately help them in saving, since OTAs charge margins up to 35%. BookingJini aims to empower hotels in all aspects starting from customer outreach to automating their booking process, improving their online presence and revenue in order to stimulate top-line and bottom-line growth. Asmita Mukherjee spoke with Mishra to know more about BookingJini and its offerings.
Speaking about the inception of BookingJini, Mishra briefed, “With the rise of Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and tech-led hotel aggregators in the previous decade, the hospitality industry has improved technologically, but the majority of the innovation and disruption has occurred on the front end. In the meantime, outdated processes and/or decadent software continue to be used in the back-end, especially in small to medium-sized hotels. While large hotel chains have in-house tech teams that can create specialised products, less affluent hotels are left out of the digital scene. As a result, BookingJini was launched in 2017, as I wanted to build something that would provide hotels with their own sales funnel, increase traffic to their websites, and eventually save them money, because OTAs charge up to 35% margins.”
Mishra also informed that BookingJini’s numerous products enable a hotel to increase its online presence and improve customer flow without relying on third-party agencies.
Pointing out the various advantageous facets of BookingJini, he stated, “We provide a safe and single-dashboard view of their day-to-day operations, as well as, custom-designed mobile-friendly websites to increase sales. We have expanded from booking engine to hotel distribution, customer outreach, revenue generation, digital marketing, price recommendation engine and more.”
Elaborating further, Mishra informed, “Our distribution engine helps hotels integrate with all OTAs and have one-click access to room inventory; a marketing engine to increase a hotel’s digital presence and improve customer flow without having to rely on OTAs and other agencies; a guest experience engine that helps them create customised experiences like contact-less check-ins, walkthroughs, room service, etc, on an app; and an analytics engine that allows them to make predictive data-driven decisions,”.
Since its inception, the company has already managed to bag some big brands in its kitty. “Some major hotels that BookingJini is tied up with are, Park Hotels and Resorts, ITC Hotels, The HHI, Empires Hotel, Lemon Tree, The Landmark Towers etc. Besides them, we also power Kerala Tourism, Odisha Tourism, Tamil Nadu Tourism, and Andaman Tourism among others,” informed Mishra.
Sharing his long term strategic vision for BookingJini, Mishra said, “We want to be the largest platform to support all types of hotels and accommodations by 2027. It will enable the hotel community to come together under one platform and have the power of scale.”
Being a startup, the company is now focused on cash flow and building a strong EBITDA driven business. “Before we go for funding, which is essential for a hyper-growth SaaS business, we want to make sure that we break even at our unit economics. This round of investment will take us global and further enrich the product.”
asmita.mukherjee@saffronsynergies.in
