HOSPITALITY
Renewed interest of tourists in Pakistan’s most scenic and sightseeing destinations in Gilgit-Baltistan and northern areas presents an opportunity for online rental and vacation platforms to make inroads into the country’s underdeveloped tourism sector.
One can find budgeted hotel rooms in Hunza, Naran, Kaghan and other tourist-attractions on global fame fare aggregator sites: Expedia, TripAdvisor or Booking.com that all operate from outside the country. Berlin-based incubator Rocket Internet, however, landed in Pakistan to take first-mover advantage in online hotel booking sector by launching Jovago in 2014.
In peak seasons of summer, Jovago usually witnesses rush for most-visited tourist attractions of Naran and Kaghan, yet Kalam and Hunza are the new charms on the platform.
“Suddenly, demand is rising for Hunza. We are getting additional demand for Kalam as well,” said Nadine Malik, chief executive officer at Jovago Asia.
Malik said the growth of Jovago is proportional to internet penetration as well as to growth in tourism industry, “so when more hotels and guest houses are opened we grow.”
She added that 40 to 50 hotels have been opened in Naran and Kaghan, while access is also getting better due to improving road network and people are willing to visit those places.
Price and product comparison has ever been difficult for bargain hunters. Especially, on brick and mortar arrangement customers have to spend a lot of energy and time to find out a suitable deal.
Advent of online platforms is, however, getting the customers rid of such a hassle as they visit digital channels in the comfort of their homes to use them as a comparison tool.
Jovago allows customers to compare fares of more than 2,000 hotels across the country and 80,000 hotels across Asia, including Bangladesh and Myanmar. Worldwide, it lists 225,000 hotels from Portugal to France. Jovago.pk has a team of more than 40 employees and offices in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. The site’s chief executive said People who walk in may find difficulty in availability and are quoted prices of a particular day.
In Pakistan, she said the norm is, however, not to go to websites and then walk in, “the norm is people just go and walk in to hotels.”
“In developed countries, people visit a website 12 times before actually making a booking,” she said. “(In Pakistan), there are a lot of transactions taking place offline.”
Yet, she added that there is no country in the world where the entire transaction is done online. “You go to Paris and not all hotel bookings are done online.”
Jovago (desktop and mobile sites) attracted three million visits since 2014. Comparatively, Expedia.com counted 57.78 million traffic alone in May, while that of Booking.com stood at a gigantic 366 million, said traffic stats site Similarweb.com.
Jovago regional chief counted three big challenges in the country.
“There is a lack of education and this issue is generally for every online business and not just for hospitality industry,” she said. “There is a trust issue and then, Internet penetration is not that much high; but, it is growing.”
Government said broadband Internet penetration jumped to 29 percent from three percent in a short span. The government also aims to debut 5G mobile technology, which is 40 times faster than 4G, as mobile Internet users rapidly grew to 40.56 million by the end of April – almost a quarter of the population.
The burst in mobile-enthusiasts is, actually, a light at the end of the tunnel for online ventures struggling to hook up with the consumers.
“The idea for Jovago or for any ecommerce business in Pakistan is [to benefit] from massive youth population,” Malik said. “We aim to capitalise on this segment in the next four or five years when they have purchasing power. These are the people who will be transacting online.”
Jovago’s mobile traffic almost doubled in a year. Last year, 35 percent of visits on the site came from mobile phone. Today, it is 66 percent.
Yet, majority of the bookings still take place on desktop despite a noticeable tilt towards smartphones. Hotel bookings via mobile phone rose to 42 percent in 2017 from 20 percent in 2015.
“There are limitations on phone,” Jovago’ executive said. “On mobile phone we don’t have chat facility, (in fact) nobody else has. Secondly, when you book hotels on desktop you have multiple tabs in your sight, but you don’t have this on mobile phones.”
She refused to call it as technology underperformance, “but it is related to customer’s perspective.”
“Millennial will find it more comfortable while using smartphone all the time,” she said. “All the global players are becoming mobile-first.”
Jovago’s edge is that there is no major competitor in the market. Foreign sites are operating at a low scale and mainly focused on urban centres. They have low inventory: 100 to 200 listings. Businesses come and disappear in six months or so.
Besides, Malik said Jovago sees its edge in peak seasons.
“We are mainly catering to the domestic travellers,” she added. “With our website, they can look at pictures of hotel rooms and compare prices. You can also look at customer reviews: independent third party review and this information is valuable to customers who are going for the first time.”
Jovago chief said the site’s conversion rate is near to the global benchmark, which is two to three percent.
She contended an argument that only a small number of visitors actually make bookings.
“How many times you take a trip in a year? One or two. So, our conversion rate is very good despite that we are not a developed country,” she said. “Way forward for us is to make more partners: hotels, airlines, transporters, and we really want to focus on them.”
The writer is a staff member
