HotelsHippo.com, a fully owned Sri Lankan company, officially introduced its first product in hotel booking at a meeting held at the Ministry of Tourism recently, headed by the Minister of Tourism and Aviation, Prasanna Ranatunga, in the presence of Ms. D. L. Sannasooriya, Additional Secretary to the Ministry of Tourism, Kimarli Fernando, Chairperson of the Tourism Development Authority, Dhammika Wijesinghe, the Director General of SLTDA and Keerthi Bandara Herath, the Chairman and Managing Director of HotelsHippo.com.
This online booking platform came to fruition in 2019, as the brainchild of Keerthi Bandara Herath, and has since been going under various areas of research and development to come to where it is today, three years later.
For the first time in the world, the online booking platform offers guests and hotels to interact one on one, in real time to negotiate a personalized rate for a holiday/stay, which is available on both Android and iOS.
It also allows guests to send requests to hotels with their requirements so that the hotels can offer a personalized one-time rate. Service is offered with the backing of their 24/7 call centre and technical team located at their headquarters in Kandy.
The company says various foreign booking platforms take around 20 to 25% of Sri Lankan tourism income out of the country. In 2018, it was estimated that over $800 million had left the country as a result of a theory called “economic drain”, which should be minimized for the country to actually benefit from the income generated through the tourism industry. Nevertheless, hoteliers have been paying these agents commission ranging from 18 to 28%, which creates a major impact on the profits of stakeholders in the industry.
HotelsHippo.com charges only 12.5% including bank transaction fees and all bookings are guaranteed by full or partial advanced payments, so that the hotels can offer better rates to guests while keeping a decent profit. This will in turn also help the country in the long run to become known as a “value for money” tourist destination. We are currently only at 6th place in Southeast Asia.
HotelsHippo.com has joined hands with Sampath Bank, which will allow payment in all major foreign currencies in addition to payments in Sri Lankan Rupees.
The company has already partially developed a “tourism ecosystem” to facilitate all aspects of the travel and tourism industry, starting from the initial planning of the holiday; all up until returning back home. It is taking measures to address unfair and rogue traders that damage the reputation of the country and its people. It will also create an opportunity to make formal complaints through the platform so that guests can be warned of such incidents, to avoid re-occurrence. It will also assist the legal proceedings with the authorities where needed.