With Internet being easily accessible and increase in numbers of Travel Portals and Online Booking Engines, The Rates Difference / Parity of Hotels based on Nationality will soon be abolished. In coming years we might not see Taj Hotels having different rates or USD rates for Foreign Nationals and Lower rates for Indian Nationals; or Hotels in Malaysia having different rates for Middle East and Sub-Continent markets.
No Borders or Territory on Internet ??
Online means Global and accessible from everywhere. It is very difficult to draw borders on Internet and Online portal by asking Nationality for each country / nation and display their applicable rates. Portal and Engine powered by XML will be able to retrieve one response and with updated technology and user-friendliness, simple layout and quick booking will find “Nationality” option check as Difficult inclusions.
How to Control ???
It is not in hand of any online accepting international credit card to stop any foreign national buying Hotels from their portal despite of displaying available rates not applicable for foreign national then the country of origin of portal. In scenarios, where same rates are address to a region specific market such as Asian Market Rates will have India, Malaysia, Singapore and multiple country feature under Asia booking with same rates, it will be very difficult to generate booking response based on Nationality. And infect, in such case if a portal in India allows only Indian to book Hotels in Malaysia despite of having rates valid for entire Asian Market, the portal will be losing business coming online to them from Asian Market.
International / Online Rates
There can be only one solution to the mentioned problem and that will be one common rate as “Online Portal Rates or International Market Rates”.
The view within Industry is divided on the above subject, and being immerging issue; the above problem has different option and suggestions. We have encountered similar issue on our portal where one of our travel partner has generated an online reservation for his direct client in Delhi, turned up to be a Middle East Citizen. The hotel has debited us for the difference of Asian to Middle East Market Applicable Rates.
I will seek your reply and suggestions on my below queries / comments :
1) If the entire transaction would have been different, I mean if a Indian client had bought a Hotel on Middle East Market Rates (higher then Asian), than would the hotel have refunded them money on check out ???
2) How do we control reservation, if a foreign national working in India books his vacation through an Indian Travel Portal (having Indian credit card) ????
3) How do we control reservation of Indian Corporate booking their employee or consultant, who is working in India but is a Foreign national through their regular travel agent in India ???? Since, company has to make payments, they will book through their regular contracted travel agent only, than in such case who needs to pay the difference ???
Feel free to write back to me directly on rezlive@traveldesigner.in with Attn : Jaal Shah – Foreign National Issue in the subject.
Posted Online by,
Jaal K Shah, Managing Director Travel Designer India Pvt Ltd
2 comments:
Jaal,
I fully agreement with your thoughts and comments. Very soon for sure, we will see all different nationality based rates being Abolished. The Room is same, the services will be same and hence, rate cannot be different if traveler has a difference in Nationality.
Peter, OnlineHBK, Inc
Peter, Many thanks for your comments.
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