No broken promises, Travelguru 'guarantees' a hotel room

With 3,000 hotels in more than 200 cities in India, Travelguru.com is confident that you can get a hotel room to suit your budget anywhere – and that’s a guarantee. In its new TVC, which will go on air on Friday, travel portal Travelguru says exactly that.

The TVC opens with a lady returning a wedding band to her partner, paying no heed to his protests. In another sequence, a child waits in pouring rain for his parent to pick him up from school. In the next sequence, a lady waits, presumably for her boyfriend, outside a cinema hall. In the next sequence, two people wait at an office desk for that all-important phone call. The voiceover says, “We know how you feel when a promise is broken. That’s why we never break ours. A hotel room guaranteed. Any budget. Anywhere.”

According to the company’s research on the behaviour of hotel customers, many were apprehensive about booking their hotels online. The reason: lack of certainty about booking confirmations, and lack of information about their hotel. Travelguru claims to overcome this by guaranteeing a confirmation and supporting the hotel details with reviews.

Nagpal adds that Travelguru offers instant booking on all of its 3,000 accommodation options, unlike most travel sites which only lead to a ‘booking on request’, which may not be confirmed. The portal averages bookings of 500 room nights per day. So, how will Travelguru support its guarantee of a hotel room ‘any budget, anywhere’?

“If we didn’t have confidence in our product, we wouldn’t have claimed this in our TVC. We can safely assert that we are the Google of travel,” counters Nagpal.

Travelguru was launched in June 2006 with the tag line, ‘Great deals. Always.’ In September 2006, it moved to the present tag line, ‘Think Hotels. Think Travelguru’. The TVC to kick off on Friday will launch the campaign on the web, print and outdoor media. Travelguru is also launching an animated character called ‘Guru’, which will play a pivotal role in the mass campaign, playing the role of ‘advisor’ in the decision-making process of its customers.

As competition heats up in the online travel space, travel portals are doing everything they can to catch their customer through multiple media. Hotel bookings being the bait, the need for differentiation is even more apparent. Recently, MakeMyTrip aired a TVC promoting its hotels offerings, followed by a revamp of its online hotel section.