Paytm enters Oyo's territory; launches on-demand hotel booking business with NightStay

Paytm has acquired a hotel booking app called NightStay which allows travellers to book hotels instantly while assuring high quality service. With the Rs 142 crore acquisition of NightStay, Paytm is looking to re-enter the hotel aggregation business and expand its travel operations by offering last minute deals to the tourists.  However, the on-demand hotel booking space is already dominated by OYO Rooms and it will be interesting to see how this new venture plays out.

Meanwhile, Alibaba backed Payments Company has already partnered with over 5000 hotels across the budget, luxury and business segments. Based in Noida, NightStay was started by Nasr Khan in December 2014 with a basic alpha app. The beta version of NightStay was announced on March 2015. Some of the features of the members only  NightStay app are as follows.

• The app only features handpicked luxury hotels, boutique hotels and budget hotels

• NightStay guarantees low prices on hotels in India

• It offers easy booking process and last minute hotel reservations and offers

• NightStay shows cheapest available hotel deals

• Its hotel partners include Sarovar, Zuri, Treebo, Indian Hotels Co's Ginger, Sterling and Vresorts

Paytm is trying to expand its travel operations and NightStay would be a great fit for the company. According to the Economic Times, the app aggregates unsold inventory across luxury and business hotels and offers last minute concessional rates to customers. NightStay offers its services in 12 cities including Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Goa, Agra, Jaipur, Chennai and Bangalore and is available from 12:00 noon till 12:00 midnight.

The NightStay app is available for both Android and iOS users.

Paytm first got into travel business in the year 2014 and sells several lakh tickets a year across rail bus and flight bookings. Paytm also offers foreign exchange services to international travellers. Earlier in 2017, there were reports that Paytm was looking to acquire startup Via.com

According to a report by Deutsche Bank AG - online hotel bookings segment is slated to grow to $2.3 billion by 2020.

Meanwhile, for financial year FY18, Paytm's parent company, One 97 Communications, reported revenue of Rs 3,235 crore, a nearly fourfold jump from the year before, even as its loss jumped 69% to Rs 1,490 crore. Total expenses for the year were Rs 4,718 crore.

Edited By: Udit Verma

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