Zhara HS’ ‘BookNow.lk’: Next big frontier for Sri Lankan hospitality goes live
Saturday, 28 June 2014 00:00
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Sri Lanka’s latest hotel booking portal ‘booknow.lk’ by Zhara HS was launched on Friday at Sancharaka Udawa 2014 held at the SLECC, Colombo.
Initiated in February this year, this is the second phase of the ‘Zhara Gateway’ initiative by the Zhara team at JKCS aimed at optimising the online presence of local hotels. Reaching over 100 hotels in 100 days, Zhara Gateway’s mission of elevating independent hotel websites into online showcases set a benchmark this June.
Through booknow.lk the focus is now on bringing all these hotels into one optimized platform across which the experiences of the destination are marketed through the variety of properties listed online.
Given the level of dynamism in the internet enabled tourism industry today, hotels can hardly afford to be a conservative slow adopter in online revenue generation channels.
The Zhara philosophy revolves around changing this same mindset through cost-effective technological empowerment for local properties. One very crucial low cost revenue stream as such is the internet itself taking over travel patterns and governing travel decisions across the world.
As the first step of this venture, Zhara Gateway was introduced redefining the processes of online hotel booking entirely with a view to opening up this very same revenue channel. Integrated to the hotel’s own website the solution is an easy to use and manage booking page which directs to a payment gateway ultimately.
With no cost for set up and the fastest implementation time of 48 hours Zhara Gateway is by far the most reasonably priced option in Sri Lanka for the revenue hungry industry with only a 6.5% charge on every confirmed online booking.
“The response received to Zhara Gateway when we first launched it this February was exceptional and proved that the Hotel industry is now opening its doors quite fast to technology compared to just a couple of years back when we first stepped in to the arena. Ensuring that this trend continues to elevate the industry as a whole was the key thought behind this one-stop-shop introduced as booknow.lk. Now with over 100 hotels of all scales on board and counting we are looking forward to making this platform the top global online gateway for attracting tourism to Sri Lanka,” said JKCS CEO J.C. Ekanayake expressing his views at the launch at SLECC.
This new online frontier facilitates hotels, resorts, boutique hotels, villas and all other types of properties in Sri Lanka in one comprehensive online showcase located at www.booknow.lk and signing up and implementation is entirely free.
