‘Should slot booking of hotels be taken seriously?’ was a question that would often be asked within our corporate circle. I always took the side of the statements where such offerings were tagged as teenage stuff. The overall proposition sounded more like goodness which wouldn’t bother me as an adult.
But very recently, I had a situation where I was traveling to Delhi with my baby as my husband had been traveling abroad. Being a Mumbaikar, Delhi has always been a foreign city to me. And now, with all my friends living with their own families, the good bachelor days are over and so is staying in each other’s places. On the last day of my stay, I got done with all my corporate affairs and did a bit of shopping. Always a good girl when it comes to punctuality, I reached the airport on time while taking extra precautions. And then the unexpected happened! Flights get delayed by 15 hours. The chilling cold made me feel the cold actually, for the first time. At 9:30 p.m., I felt quite numb. Carrying my baby and guiding my trolley full of luggage to the reception area, I almost started crying and the manager was empathetic but broke the bad news that almost every accommodation was full, considering the overwhelming fog and multiple cancellations of flights. Using the already overpacked lounge was not an option I could go with, as my baby had already started crying.
10:40 p.m. already, I didn’t want to disturb my friends. The chill was growing with every passing minute and I decided to rather spend the night in a good hotel than waiting and fighting for my rights. Taking a cab, I went around and wow, I realized that none of the good hotels was dynamic to give away a room at an odd hour without any pre-bookings and the ones who were agreeing were charging for 2 days of stay, it all sounded horrific. I almost made a decision to go for one of these hotels but then I had an extra thought in mind. For the first time, I Googled for ‘hotels on a slot basis in Delhi’ and bumped into BookBySlot. To my surprise, the platform looked quite decent and had reviews from a lot of mature people, shattering my prejudices. Then I checked for hotels near Delhi airport and then I came to know that this company has strategically picked hotels near airports and railway stations. I did my booking in the same hotel where I had almost overpaid 20 minutes before. I couldn’t help my frown when the manager suddenly changed within a second as he realized that I have used BookBySlot now.
Being escorted to my room, I checked for details about BookBySlot and realized that some really senior people from the industry have taken this responsibility to address a major issue that is not even identified by impudent people like myself.
This is how my perception towards hotels on an hourly basis changed and thank you BookBySlot for the same. I am writing this piece to express my gratitude and opinions, very loudly 🙂