YatraA good news for the globetrotters, who visit India to spend their vacations. Online travel company Yatra has decided to add homestays in its package, which will be commenced from 21 September 2015. With this strategy, the company is aiming at alluring more and more travelers, so as to have a wider customer base. Initially, this new offer, to be called as Travelguru Rooms and Travelguru Stays will be around in 20 cities, mostly in Kerala, Goa and Rajasthan including 500 homestays and hotel rooms.

Commenting on this offer, Mr. Sharat Dhall, the President of Yatra.com said,

“For the value-conscious Indian traveler, what was missing in hone-stays was standardization, mostly in terms of quality”.

He further commented,

“We hope to increase this to 5,000 in three months. We already have around 40,000 hotels with Yatra”.

The starting price has been kept at INR 999 per night and the total average cost will be INR 2000 per room per night. Besides, the company will also provide accommodation segment comes in the Travelguru Stays soon. It has been observed that the tourists both, international and domestic want to delve into the experience of the country and for that, day by day, a demand is increasing for homestays.

Kerala, Rajasthan, Goa and some parts of Tamil Nadu and Jammu and Kashmir have become the center of attraction for the travelers and according to the report of 2014, homestays from 13% of total accommodation around 50 emerging tourism destination in India, having 72% are placed in the southern part of the country and 17% in the north.

In the country, there are various government departments, which also offer home-stay option, such as Ministry of tourism has a scheme called Incredible India Bed & Breakfast/Homestay Establishments in 11 states along with Kerala tourism has such properties in 14 of its districts and Gujarat has more than 100 such properties.

Private companies also entered into this market like Mahindra Holidays and Resorts India Ltd., Saffronstays.com, Homestays.in and many others.