India among top five markets for Booking.com 

Representative image

India is among the top five markets in terms of supply growth for Dutch travel firm Booking.com, a senior executive said on March 6, adding that the company has managed to report a double digit growth in the last couple of years in terms of inventory with over 50,000 properties on board.

"India is one of the top five markets globally in terms of growth. If we were to look at our business from where it was two to three years ago, we have seen a double digit growth in inventory," Ritu Mehrotra, country manager, India, Sri Lanka and Maldives at Booking.com told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of the travel tech conference by the Internet and Mobile Association of India.

Booking.com started in India in 2012 and currently claims to be having around 50,000 properties across different segments such as guest houses, homestays and five star hotels. However, a major chunk consists of alternate accommodation.

"Over 60 percent of our users are looking for alternative accommodations," she said.

While Mehrotra didn't give details of the average ticket size of the bookings done on the site, she said that their ticket size was stabilizing in India. She added that the demand was also coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

"Demand will come where people are. There are 1.3 billion people in India and 20-25 percent are within the middle and upper middle range. This gives you 200-300 million people where your service can be relevant which is a very large chunk," she said.