In a significant move,the Sikkim Hotel & Restaurant Association SHRA has decided not to honour any bookings hereafter made by the OTA’S MakeMyTrip and Goibibo from Wednesday onwards as the two companies are not yet addressed the concerns raised by the hotel industry for quite sometime apart from just verbal assurances.
Addressing to media Raj Lama,the Genearl Secretary,SHRA along with president SHRA Pema Lamta said “The FHRAI and HREAI have in an official appeal requested all members not to honour Goibibo-MMT bookings from January 16, 2019 and have also requested that the contracts with Goibibo-MMT should be terminated immediately,”
Earlier to confer this concern, Sikkim Hotels & Restaurant Association (SHRA) convened a meeting of all hotels on 14th January 2019 at Gangtok.
It was unanimously decided at the meeting to support the call given by the parent associations representing the hospitality industry in India, FHRAI (Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Association of India) & HREAI(The Hotel & Restaurant Association of Eastern India) to close inventory for OTA MakeMyTrip and Goibibo from January 16th onwards indefinitely till their concerns were addressed.
SHRA had earlier officially written to OTAs with concerns raised by local hotels but there has been no official reply from Goibibo & MakeMyTrip apart from just verbal assurances. The concerns raised were:
- No coupon code discounting on hotels from OTAs
2. Commission level to be set at 15%
3. No performance linked bonuses (PLB)without written consent of hotels and with exit clauses
4. Early check in / Late checkout / Cancellation / Modification policies to be decided only by the hotel and not the Online Portals
5. Payments are to be more transparent with all payments to be made within 48 hours of a booking being made and not at the time of check in.
While other OTAs like Travelguru.com, Yatra.com have officially replied to and accepted most concerns raised and have even agreed to reduce their commission to 15 % on hotel bookings. Other OTAs like booking.com & agoda.com, airbnb.com etc leave the commission and discretion to the hotels themselves and which did not have cause for concern among the hoteliers as they deemed it fair as compared to goibibo and make my trip.
FHRAI , HREAI and SHRA have jointly stated that it is pertinent for the industry to stay united and firm to the tactics of the online portals to divide the associations and such unfair practices will make the industry bleed. These online portals are charging as much as up to 40% commission to some of the hotel in our region as the OTA take advantage of locational disadvantage, non extranet fluency and other factors like competition and playing one hotel against the other as to extract maximum commission and benefit to the OTAs.
In the interest of everybody, the hotel associations have requested them to unify the commission percent of 15% across the board irrespective of the number of rooms, the hotel is booking or the tariff of the hotel as it is the standard norm everywhere in the world.
