Room Aggregators Challenge Service Apartments In Mumbai

The property rates in Mumbai are not the only things that make Mumbai unaffordable, if you want to visit Mumbai you may have a tough time just spending a few weeks in the city. Five star hotel accommodations are often out of reach for the vast numbers who visit Mumbai either on business or vacation. Even paying rent in most parts of the city is unaffordable for most, and may be so until a few redevelopment projects in Mumbai, plans for which have been on and off in the pipeline, are constructed allowing perhaps for the first time affordable housing in Mumbai at prime locations.

One of the better ways to visit Mumbai may be to either stay in one of the numerous service apartments in the city or to book an affordable room from one of the newly formed startups which serves as an aggregator of rooms in the city. Both options for staying in the city are commonly used and are widely available depending on where you intend to stay as well as your budget. Service apartments in Mumbai are among the best in the country and though most are not very expensive, the rates at high end ones can be nearly as high as some of the smaller five star hotels in the city.

The new and perhaps more popular option for staying in the city, that of services provided by a room aggregator is a fresh and widely popular option for people who need an accommodation in a large city but don’t have the budget to stay at a five star hotel or an even cheaper one. The company which offers such services rents 2 or 3 BHK flats in Mumbai from owners with the intent to turn them into a tiny quasi-budget hotel. Such rooms are relatively inexpensive and often have a cook and attendant at the premises. They offer services such as Wi Fi and the comfort of home cooked food and most such apartment units have a common area where the guests may congregate to either chat or watch TV.

The innovative use of renting flats in Mumbai to be used as accommodations for travelers is a novel one and may in time prove to be more popular among travelers than staying in service apartments in Mumbai. Despite service apartments in Mumbai themselves being a relatively new phenomenon and one designed to cater to a certain class of business traveler, the speed and innovation of some new startup’s may reshape the business of business travelers.

Such aggregators act as a giant hotel with rooms all across a city providing easy online booking as well as access at any time of day. Many new projects in Mumbai as well as at other cities are used by such aggregators to provide business travelers a high level of comfort at as yet unmatched prices. The developments rented by room aggregators may not necessarily be in the least expensive locations, many luxury apartments in Mumbai too serve as properties utilized by such companies to offer travelers an alternative to hotels and service apartments and the cost of rooms at such developments may not be too different from that at rooms in less expensive flats in Mumbai.

Though it may be too early to tell whether such new business models will challenge the market currently served by service apartments in Mumbai, considering the speed, efficiency, and funding capital of such startups, we may find out sooner than later.