For its annual mega campaign, “Jaisi Zaroorat Waisa Stay,” Make My Trip (Go-MMT) has teamed up with India’s leading alternative accommodation network, SaffronStays. It was only apt to shake hands with a national player like Go-MMT as a brand that exclusively manages more than 250 private villas across all categories. SaffronStays offers more than 250 homes across Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Goa, Rajasthan, Kerala, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu, including 113 pet-friendly homes, 129 affordable homes, 42 ultra-luxury homes, and more.
Joining together with a company like SaffronStays as one of India’s leading OTA platforms solidifies its efforts to advance alternative accommodations in the market. Numerous marketing studies have uncovered a crucial marketing insight concerning the consumption of alternative accommodations in this country. People frequently reserve a villa based only on their specific requirements for that stay.
Says Deven Parulekar, founder, SaffronStays, “You may be in your younger days, going out with your colleagues and splitting the bill. For such stays, you need a luxurious, Gatsby-style villa which is very Instagram-friendly. But when you’re going with your family, your ask is very different – maybe you want a senior-citizen-friendly home, a pet-friendly home, or even a child-friendly home. It is the same you, but at different stages of your life. The same individual thinks differently when with different people.”
SaffronStays has also noticed that people always make reservations for special events, such as college reunions, farewell parties, milestone birthdays, wedding proposals, girl’s getaways, B-School peer get-togethers, road trips, pre-wedding showers, or even intimate wedding celebrations. Sometimes all you want to do is get together with your friends and spend some quality time together, or you want to take your pet on vacation.
Adds Parulekar, “Pre-Covid, when we were a network of only 50-70 homes, it was easy to market each home to the guest. Now that we have 250+ homes across the country, we realized we had to slice and dice the market and present different categories of offerings to different people in different phases of their life for different occasions. MMT’s ‘Jaisi Zaroorat, Waisa Stay’ campaign fits perfectly in our game plan, and we decided to jump the gun and partner with them after they shared the same insight.”