Micro-stay - an hourly hotel booking option by ChaturMusafir.com
Are you on a long leisure travel or business travel and like to use a hotel facility just for a few hours? Chatur Musafir offers micro-stay booking in India with the option to book hotels for a few hours and pay according to the hourly rate.
How many times you wished you could use a decent hotel for a few hours just to take a shower or relax a bit before you continue your journey? Or, haven't you come across situation where you have a layover in the airport and wished to have a nap? I have been to such situation a lot of times. I frequently travel to Bangalore for blogger meets and also to meet some of the clients of my digital marketing agency. I usually take an overnight train or bus and reach Bangalore by morning. I have to check-in to a hotel just for taking a shower and refresh myself and then checkout by noon since most hotels have a 11~12 noon checkout policy. It would have been ideal if I could stay in the hotel for 5-6 hours from morning till the time of my return train without having to pay for 2 full nights.
Thanks to Chatur Musafir for introducing hourly hotel packages. With their new micro-stay program, hotels can allow transit travelers, roadies and day trippers to check-in, refresh and check-out and most importantly, pay only for the few hours they used the facilities. With the new hourly rate program introduced by www.chaturmusafir.com, guests can book hotel rooms for just a few hours, starting from 3 hours to 12 hours and pay accordingly. In addition to budget hotels and guest houses, even premium hotels are now adopting this kind of micro-stay booking.What is micro-stay?
Micro-stay is the hotel facility available for a short time, for a few hours up to half a day. Instead of booking a hotel room for the full day/night, travelers and day trippers can use the hotel facility for a few hours and pay only part of the daily room tariff. The micro-stay concept became popular in Europe in 2008 during the economic downtime. Eventually, micro-stay concept spread to USA and parts of south-east Asia. Until recently, Indian hotels turned a blind eye towards the micro-stay concept for business reasons. However, the Indian hospitality business scenario is changing as more and more Indian travelers are looking for budget travel options.
With changing market dynamics, including online bookings and real-time reviews, hotels too must change, says Adarsh Shetty, president of AHAR, the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association. "Micro-stays are a reflection and a part of that change."How Chatur Musafir is different?
Chatur Musafir is one of the first travel booking platform which offered micro-stay booking option in India. Guests can o book hotel rooms in packs of 3, 6 and 12 hours. In less than 2 years, the website has seen 14,000 micro-stay bookings at star hotels across 20 cities in India.
Some of the premium hotels offering the micro-stay option include Park properties, Taj group of hotels, Courtyard by Marriott and many more.
"In a price-sensitive market, if we can resell the same room in a same-day cycle and double our revenue, then why not," says Sujith Chandrasekharan, director of rooms and the man leading the micro-stay initiative at Park properties across Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai, Goa and Navi Mumbai.
There are 5-star hotels like Taj Lands End, Mumbai which have adapted the micro-stay model on its own without any new-age aggregators involved. Taj Land's End now offers four-hour stays between 9 am and 6 pm.
"Given today's hectic work schedules, people find it difficult to plan holidays in advance. Checking into a hotel, even in their own city, can provide a break from the routine. Since these guests may not necessarily want to rent the room for an entire night, we came up with the micro-stay option," says Zal Tarapore, director of rooms at Taj Lands End.
Courtyard by Marriott in Gurgaon and Sahara Star in Mumbai both introduced micro-stay options three years ago too, responding to the many short-stay inquiries they received from business travellers. History of Chatur Musafir travel booking site
Two years ago, ad executive Preeti Jain and her husband Manish, a businessman, were travelling from Coimbatore to Jodhpur by flight and then train, with a nine-hour gap in between.
"We needed a room for, say, six hours. Just to wash up and relax. But we still ended up paying the full day's tariff," says Preeti, 35 Co-Founder . "We decided to do something about that, and that's how Chatur Musafir [Smart Traveller] came into being."
Chatur Musafir offers micro-stay booking in most major cities in India including Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and smaller cities like Jaipur, Kochi and Amritsar and pilgrim towns like Shirdi & Katra.
Lot of businessmen are already taking advantage of the micro-stay program offered through Chatur Musafir. Manoj Mehata, Mumbai-based businessman and Director of Kora Gifts and used the website while driving to Gandhidham, paying just Rs 1,400 for a 12-hour stay at a 3-star hotel in Ahmedabad, which would have otherwise cost Rs 3,000 (for 24 hours).
"I much prefer inter-city drives to trains or flights, but finding a nice, reasonable place to stop for the night was always a problem," he says. "Four months ago I stumbled upon Chatur Musafir while searching the internet with word combinations like Hourly Hotels, short-stays etc. This time, I checked in at 10 pm, slept through the night, had a shower the next morning, grabbed my complimentary breakfast and was back on the road by 8 am. It was convenient and great value for money."How micro-stay booking works with ChaturMusafir.com?
This website is no different from other travel booking sites like TripAdvisor or Expedia, except that it helps you save money by allowing you to book micro-stay in hotels of your choice.
Here are the typical steps to book an hourly stay using Chatur Musafir:
1. Visit their website www.chaturmusafir.com and sign in using your Facebook account or Google+ account.
2. Search for the places you like to book the hotel on hourly rate
3. Provide your phone number and verify it using the OTP you receive.
4. Wait for an email from the website with the list of hotels available that match your rates, location and hours of stay.
5. If you like to conform the booking, follow the instructions in the email and enjoy your stay in the hotel of your choice.In a nut shell - What are micro-stays?
Instead of traditional 12 noon check-out or 24-hour check-in-check-out cycle, micro-stays allow travellers to book hotel rooms for fewer hours and pay accordingly.
Micro-stays first become popular in Europe during the economic downturn of 2008, and then spread to the US and south-east Asia. It has started gaining momentum in India only recently. Here, hotels ranging from budget to boutique and five-stars such as Courtyard by Marriott in Gurgaon and Sahara Star in Mumbai have begun to offer the option over the past three years. Online booking platforms and apps such as Stay Uncle, 6 Hourly, Chatur Musafir and HotelsAroundYou have started acting as aggregators and partnering with hotels to offer packages in cities across the country.
There are various options available for micro-stays. Chatur Musafir offers slots of 3 hour, 6 hour and 9 hour. Some of the aggregators and hotels refuse to entertain unmarried couples for micro-stay programs due to various concerns.
Check-out the micro-stay booking at www.chaturmusafir.com
The concept is interesting. This is the first time hearing about the term - "micro-stay". This can be very comforting and helpful for tourists and frequent travellers. Any competitor or similar apps exists?