"CPEC could have a huge impact on tourism," says Nadine Malik , MD - Jovago Asia

Nadine Malik Almani is the Managing Director of Jovago Asia, which is an international venture by Rocket Internet specializing in hotel and vacation rentals globally. She has earlier served as the Country Manager for Jovago Pakistan. 

Nadine Malik is a graduate from Bryn Mawr College, USA and started her career as a banker with Citibank Pakistan. After 4 years at Citi, she went on to pursue her MBA at INSEAD, France and then worked for 2 years as a Management Consultant for Bain and Company in Singapore and Dubai.

Nadine joined Rocket Internet in August 2014 to establish operations for Jovago.com, Pakistan's first online hotel booking platform. BR Research recently sat down with Nadine and discussed the happenings around tourism and hospitality industry. Below are edited excerpts.

BR Research: Around the world, online hospitality industry has invested immensely in customer care. What has happened in the past two years at Jovago in terms of technology adoption and customer care?

Nadine Malik: The company has grown leaps and bounds in the last two years. We have a fully serviced call center which is accessible round the clock. This is because we wanted to be at hand to solve any problem from check in to check out to the trouble that may arise with the hotel management. We have a very large customer services team to answer every need of the customer.

We needed to learn a lot from customer service. We wanted each department to be aware of what is happening for the decision making process to be faster.

The online hospitality industry is an uncharted territory right now therefore we wanted to have access to the call center's knowledge and experience. I have listened to calls and taken bookings and we encourage other departments to do the same.

Our revenue management department that is responsible for keeping relationships with hotels, is encouraged to sit in the customer service department so that they know what issues are arising with the hotels and customers.

We have increased our call center capability and with the data we had we tailored our deals to suit the Pakistani customer.

BRR: Have you started doing things differently than you were two years ago?

NM: Initially it was a very manual process because we had to educate the consumer and the hotel. We have now streamlined a coordinated a lot of processes as our inventory has grown tremendously.

A very sizable amount of hotels have been educated by us and more control is given to them. We have developed an external application for them which they can log in to from their phones to see how many people are checking out their hotels on our website and how many bookings have come in. They can confirm the bookings or change the rates on the application and that automatically changes it on the website.

The hotels have also been shared conversion statistics. This way they know that when their conversion is less than two percent, they will have to change their pricing.

We have also invested in meeting of these hotels face to face. We try to get the best prices, promotions and packages from them.

BRR: You must have intriguing insights into consumer behavior of the hospitality industry. What are the key variables customers are looking for as they go for booking?

NM: According to the surveys we have done, the first two things that people look at are price and convenience. They are by and large price sensitive when choosing hotels.

We try to have enough information available on our website as we want our customers to make informed choices. People have different benchmarks for what is a good service standard. To combat that, we take reviews from the customer and upload them on our website. This helps them make educated guesses about the hotels.

A customer may have mentioned that a certain hotel does not have good breakfast, but another customer may be willing to forgo the breakfast if the hotel fits their price range. There is an automatic review score that is calculated.

BRR: What is the pace at which you have been increasing the properties?

NM: We have reached a saturation point. Right now we have 1,500 properties, but this number goes up and down as we improve relationships. However, the base is of 2,000 hotels.

Our acquisition team that finds these hotels used to be bigger, but now we have got almost all the hotels especially in Pakistan, so we have reduced the size of the team.

BRR: What is the incentive for the customer to book the property via your company?

NM: The biggest incentive is that when there is lack of availability of accommodation, it makes sense to book it through us, because at least your booking is going to be confirmed. You cannot be sure that you will get a room if you decide to call the hotel or walk in.

There are also hotels that want to undercut us, so we have to work within the limitations.

BRR: Could you share some light on the industry demographics, in terms of average age, favorite spots, busiest cities etc?

NM: Our customers are mostly male, between the ages of 25 and 45. Most of it is leisure. In the summer, a massive traffic goes towards the northern areas and throughout the rest of the year, Karachi, Islamabad, Lahore, Murree are our biggest markets.

In 2015, we weren't seeing a lot of business trips to Karachi but in 2016 we have seen a remarkable difference. From our hotel managers, we found out that people were not willing to do business in Karachi because of the security situation but now that has changed.

BRR: What is the most used category in terms of star categories?

NM: It is obviously 3-star, but the results are skewed because in Pakistan, there are very few foreign 5-star hotels.

BRR: What is the level of competition in terms of price and promotion?

NM: We try to be price competitive all the time but there are certain instances where the hotels have not included us in their hotel promotions. Otherwise, we are very proactive about getting promotions and lower prices. We also give our own discounts sometimes that we pay for out of our own pockets.

BRR: As you have already reached your saturation point for hotel inventory, do you expect an increase in the demand or in the occupancy?

NM: Yes. Having a fully operational team for the whole year doesn't make sense but for example last year we went directly to Naran, Kaghan before the season started.

In Pakistan there is a huge last minute culture. They book last minute i.e less than 24 hours. The hotels like to know from before how many customers will show up.

Prices fluctuate with the number of people that show up. If 200 people come of a bus the prices will increase. It is similar to a stock market, prices fluctuate and we try to convince them to keep the prices stable for us. We try to be valuable business partners to hotels during peak seasons.

BRR: Has foreign travel increased in the recent past, as we often hear about improved security situation?

NM: Yes but we haven't marketed to the influx of tourism yet, as we have been serving the domestic market right now. We have had only a few Chinese customers. Nothing major has happened yet, but we have to work on targeting them.

BRR: Are you looking forward to CPEC as a tool to increase travel to Pakistan?

NM: Yes. CPEC will improve infrastructure, leading to an increased access to remote areas. Restaurants, guest houses, hotels etc will come up which has a huge impact on tourism.

BRR: What is the strategy going ahead?

NM: Our focus in 2016 was driving growth through our operational improvement and making sure that if there are 10,000 people on our website, at least 2 percent will make a booking.

We have tried really hard to improve our customer service and get our benchmarks to an industry level which they are now

BRR: Is the online hospitality booking industry very competitive?

NM: There is not much competition locally and in Pakistan, we are so far the biggest, in terms of inventory etc. We try to make sure that out of any online travel platform we have the best price. If you find a cheaper deal , we will reimburse the difference to you.

When we developed an external application for the hotels we took a lot of feedback from them so they have us trying hard to work with them.

Most competitors, if they have around 100 hotels in their inventory, they redirect you to the 5 hotels they are working with when you try to book. This is because they have a deal with the 5 hotels.