12 years and 12k hotels: an Indian hospitality startup reveals secrets to sticking around

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In India, a startup over a decade old holds the tools that help with the daily operations of about 12,000 hotels and other hospitality businesses around the world.

Manish Gupta, RateGain’s CTO.

When it comes to travel, there are plenty of startups – like MakeMyTrip, RedBus, and OYO Rooms – in the country that can help you out. Though it’s partnered with 5,000 travel companies, RateGain focuses a little less on the *before* and more on the *during*, helping smooth over operations in hotels for your stay.

The “rate” in RateGain stands for the help the startup gives hotels in managing their room rates, but the company also offers tech to help with revenue management, electronic distribution, and brand engagement – all things that aim at helping hotels sell and operate better.

“Hotels don’t have any absolute prices associated with [them],” explains Manish. This is different than when you go to buy groceries, for example, which have set benchmark prices.

RateGain focuses a little less on the before and more on the during.

RateGain’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) takes into account market demand, location, and pricing around the hotel to help figure out how much to charge for specific rooms. Then, it helps hotels get the word out about those rates with different travel agencies. The software is available for a price that depends on what features the hotels want.

“There have always been tech solutions for hospitality, tech solutions that have evolved over time,” chief technology officer Manish Gupta tells Tech in Asia. Founded by Bhanu Chopra in 2004, RateGain still works with making hotel rates uniform but also works with promotions now. They hope to roll out a new product soon that lets hotels know when the best time is to post deals on booking sites like Booking.

Booking site Priceline added hotel revenue management to its services in May last year with the acquisition of PriceMatch. Duetto and eRevMax are other companies that help hotels manage their prices globally.

It’s a millennial world out there

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Manish says the arrival of the millennial generation to the travel scene has contributed a lot to the changes seen in tech in the space. The group travels 4.7 times a year on average, which is more than any other generation. And the money they’re spending on travel is only projected to increase. Because of the demographic’s openness to tech, it’s a lot easier to sell solutions to hotels.

Staying sharp