The Silicon Review ^Asia

Paytm enters hotel booking business by introducing booking facility on its platform. The move by the payments and e-commerce company will help them to expand its travel business.

The company intends to pump in Rs. 500 crore to boost its travel operations. Apart from that, it has also joined hands with over 500 hotels.

The main goal of the company is to capture 2M hotels and alternative accommodations throughout the world. By doing that, Paytm could seal the number one positionby 2022, among Asia’s hotel booking destinations.

The hotel partners of Paytm include Indian Hotels Co’s Ginger Sterling and Vresorts, Zuri, Treebo, and Sarovar.

The Noida-based e-commerce companyforayed into the travel business in 2014 and claims to sell more than 60 million tickets across the entire three major transportation sectors, i.e. bus, flight,and train. At the beginning of this year, the company also launched foreign–exchanges services to tourist from outside India.

As per Paytm, its travel platform will allow the customers to choose from over 50,000 rooms in the hotel space seamlessly. Apart from that, the company would work closely with partner hotels in order to develop tech-driven solutions.

The hotel booking services of Paytm will be led by Nasr Khan. Mr. Khan is the founder of NightStay. As per Madhur Deora, Paytm seeks to offer broad travel selection in its platform, and will continue to expand its travel business with the help of its trusted travel partners.

Paytm acquired NightStay. Earlier, Paytm was in talks to buy the online platform which offers last-minute bookings at luxury hotels.