Nida Rooms to add zing to Southeast Asia's budget hotel battle

The Indonesia-based start-up is the new player trying to provide uniformity of service in this space, reports Tech in Asia

The budget hotel battle in Southeast Asia is heating up. Inspired by the success of India-based Oyorooms, more start-ups are stepping in to solve the fragmented nature of this category. Rocket Internet-backed Zenrooms launched just a couple of months ago, trying to bring uniformity and discoverability to the entire experience. And the newest entrant to this space is Indonesia-based Nida Rooms.

The start-up was incorporated in September but officially launched operations a few weeks ago. It’s already locked in over 1,500 hotels in four countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
 

Nida Rooms founder Kanesh Avili has several decades of experience in the budget airline industry. He’s worked at Air Asia, Tiger Airlines, Spice Jet, and Garuda Indonesia. He outlines the success and growth of Oyorooms as one of the key motivators behind his new venture.
 

“There’s a constant stream of travellers in Southeast Asia and I felt this model would work very well here and in other emerging Asian markets,” says Kanesh.
 

The start-up works with existing hotels by locking in a certain amount of rooms to be dedicated exclusively to them. Kanesh says this is usually around 5 to 10 rooms. It’s different from other start-ups such as Oyorooms and Zenrooms in the sense that the entire hotel will not be rebranded, and only a certain portion of it will be modified to meet Nida Rooms’ standard.
 

That’s okay, according to Kanesh, as the average occupancy rate for hotels in this category hovers around the 60% mark. So 40% of their rooms are unoccupied throughout the year – and Nida helps them cover part of those.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.