Budget Hotel Aggregators in India: The Newsmakers this Week

ZiP Rooms, a brainchild of Royal Orchid Hotels’ co-promoter Keshav Baljee, announced that it aims to offer 10,000 rooms from its present 1,100 rooms by the current year end. Baljee will also include Spree Hotels, another hotel brand launched by him, under ZiP. 
Singapore-based Zen Rooms Hospitality Pte. Ltd. raised US$1 million from Sanjay Aggarwal, former CEO of Kingfisher Airlines and Kaneswaran Avili, former Chief Commercial Officer of SpiceJet. The venture floated by Vinay Gupta, Kiren Tanna and Madhur Yadav, Zen Rooms is in the process of launching operations with an inventory of 4,000 rooms across India, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
Treebo Hotels received its first round of funding (US$6 million) from Matrix Partners India and SAIF Partners. Founded in March 2015 by ex-McKinsey consultants Sidharth Gupta and Rahul Chaudhary, and ex-VP Engineering of MyGola, Kadam Jeet Jain, Treebo Hotels which currently features over 200 rooms in Bengaluru, aims to increase its network to 5,000 rooms across 20 cities over the next year.

Two Kingdoms, One Destination

Under the proposed campaign, ‘Two Kingdoms, One Destination’, Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to put forward a single visa for tourists looking to discover both countries in one trip. The objective of this campaign is to increase the flow of foreign travellers between the two nations and also set a foundation for further ASEAN integration. For Thailand, the campaign will strengthen Bangkok’s role as a main gateway to neighbouring countries including Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar. On the other hand, Cambodia will benefit from increased accessibility to and from many long-haul destinations via Thailand, thus increasing inbound tourists from Europe and the United States. It is expected that this campaign would be in effect starting the end of this year, until 2017.

Australians Applaud 10-year Visas for Chinese visitors

The Australian tourism industry has welcomed the federal government's decision to pilot 10-year, multiple-entry visas for Chinese nationals as part of a landmark free trade agreement between China and Australia signed last week. Speaking at a media conference at the Australian Tourism Exchange in Melbourne earlier this week, Tourism Australia’s managing director John O’Sullivan said that the announcement was “overwhelming positive”, particularly as 10-year visas for Chinese residents had become the “new norm” in other countries. In 2014, there were close to 840,000 Chinese visitors to Australia who were the nation’s biggest international spenders, contributing more than AU$5.7 billion (US$4.4 billion) to the economy. Both Chief Executive of Tourism Victoria, Leigh Harry and Director of Communications at Accor Hotels Pacific, Ginni Post, said they were extremely happy with the decision.

Visa-free Travel to Vietnam for Five European Countries

Following its visa exemption policy from March 2014, which allowed foreign tourists to travel visa-free to Vietnam’s special economic zone Phu Quoc, the Vietnamese government has further relaxed visa requirements, now enabling residents from France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the UK to enter Vietnam without any visa requirements for trips up to 15 days. The policy will kick in from 1 July 2015. According to CAPA, Phu Quoc International Airport reported a year-on-year growth of approximately 45% to 295,720 arrivals in the first quarter of 2015, owing to favourable government policies to support tourism growth in the destination. In the first four months of 2015, Vietnam as a whole received 2.23 million international arrivals, a 12.2% decline over the same period last year. The new visa policy is an encouraging sign indicative of the government’s efforts to revive Vietnam’s ailing tourism industry, and the hotel sector may only stand to benefit from this initiative.

Absolute Share Price Performance, as at 25 Jun 2015