What Makes a Booking Engine Right for Indian Hotels
Booking engine platforms built for Western markets frequently fall short when deployed by Indian hotels. The gaps are practical: UPI payment support is absent or handled as an afterthought, GST calculation at checkout is missing or incorrect, customer support operates outside Indian business hours, and OTA integration assumes a distribution mix that does not match the Indian market.
An Indian hotel evaluating a booking engine needs to assess it against Indian-specific requirements first, before looking at features that sound impressive in a demo but do not affect day-to-day performance.
What to Evaluate
1. UPI and Indian Payment Gateway Support
UPI is the dominant payment method for online transactions in India. Any booking engine targeting Indian guests needs UPI support built in correctly — as a primary checkout option, not an optional add-on. Look for native integration with Razorpay or PayU, which together cover UPI, net banking, and all major card networks. An engine that only accepts international credit cards will lose a significant share of Indian guest bookings at the payment step.
2. GST Compliance
Hotel room bookings in India attract GST at rates that vary by room tariff. The booking engine must calculate and display the correct GST amount at checkout and generate GST-compliant confirmation documents. An engine that does not handle GST correctly creates accounting problems and guest-facing discrepancies that undermine trust in the direct booking process.
3. Integration with Your Channel Manager and PMS
4. Indian OTA Parity
Your direct rate must always be competitive with what guests see on MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and Booking.com. A booking engine that makes it easy to monitor and maintain rate parity across Indian OTAs reduces the risk of direct rates drifting above OTA rates and removing the guest's incentive to book direct.
5. Support During Indian Business Hours
A booking engine issue on a Saturday evening during Dussehra is not a problem that can wait until Monday. Confirm that the vendor has support available during Indian business hours and ask existing Indian customers about their actual experience with support response times.Here are some e-books and webinars that can better guide your hotel.
AxisRooms Booking Engine
AxisRooms is built specifically for the Indian hotel market. It is the booking engine used by independent hotels, heritage properties, and hotel groups across India since 2011.
India-specific features
- Native UPI support through Razorpay and PayU — UPI appears as a primary payment option at checkout, not a secondary workaround
- Correct GST calculation at checkout, with GST-compliant booking confirmations generated automatically
- Direct integration with the AxisRooms channel manager — direct bookings update OTA inventory in real time through the same system
- MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Booking.com, Agoda, Expedia, and Airbnb connections managed from the same platform
- Customer support staffed during Indian business hours
- Pricing structured for Indian hotel scales — plans available for guesthouses, independent hotels, and multi-property groups
Setup
Most Indian hotels are fully live on the AxisRooms booking engine within 24 to 48 hours of completing account setup. The onboarding team handles GST configuration, payment gateway connection, and channel manager integration testing before go-live.
→ Hotel Willow Banks — Direct booking channel performance
→ The Elephant Court, Thekkady — Booking engine results at a leisure property
→ Woodstock Resort, Coorg — Mobile booking and direct channel results
→ All Success Stories — Commission savings and direct booking results
→ All Case Studies — Detailed implementation stories
Key Features to Prioritise
Mobile-first checkout
With over 70% of hotel website traffic arriving on mobile in India, the checkout experience on a phone matters as much as the desktop version. A booking engine that is responsive but not mobile-native — slow to load, with small tap targets and no UPI flow — will convert mobile visitors at a fraction of the rate it should.
Upsell capability at checkout
The point of booking is the most effective moment to offer room upgrades, meal packages, airport transfers, and other ancillary services. A booking engine that supports upsell offers during checkout generates meaningfully higher booking value per reservation compared to one that only confirms the base room rate.
Rate plan flexibility
The engine should support multiple rate plans simultaneously: base rate, advance purchase, weekend rates, corporate codes, loyalty pricing, and packages. A hotel with only one rate available on direct booking gives guests no advantage over booking on an OTA.
Analytics and conversion tracking
The ability to see where guests drop off in the checkout flow — which step, which device type, which rate plan — is what allows you to improve conversion over time. A booking engine without this data leaves you guessing about why guests are not completing bookings.
ROI for Indian Hotels
A booking engine that shifts 20 to 25% of those OTA bookings to direct recovers approximately Rs. 7 to 9 lakhs per year in saved commissions from one property. The annual cost of most booking engine platforms for a hotel of this size sits between Rs. 15,000 and Rs. 60,000. The payback period is typically measured in weeks, not months.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q1-Can I use a booking engine without a channel manager?
A-Yes, but you will need to manage OTA inventory separately. Without a channel manager integration, direct bookings and OTA bookings do not share a live inventory pool, which creates overbooking risk when both channels are active. For any hotel managing more than one or two OTAs, the combination of booking engine and channel manager is the right setup.
Q2-How do I promote direct bookings in India?
A-The most effective tactics for Indian hotels: a best available rate guarantee on your website, a direct booking link on your Google My Business listing, email campaigns to past guests before peak periods, a WhatsApp booking inquiry option for guests who want to confirm before booking, and a clear best-rate message on your social media profiles. The booking engine converts the traffic these tactics bring — it does not generate the traffic independently.
Q3-Does a booking engine work for guesthouses and small properties?
A-Yes. Commission savings are proportionally valuable at any property size. A 15-room guesthouse shifting 15 bookings per month from OTA to direct at an 18% commission rate saves roughly Rs. 12,000 to 15,000 per month depending on ADR — enough to cover most booking engine subscription costs several times over.