| | August 20188CIOReviewundreds and thousands of brick and mor-tar bookstores in North America were made obsolete within a span of a few years when Amazon.com started selling books online. This was back in the days where less than half the populations were warming up to the internet tech-nology. It was not until online destinations such as Kayak and Lonely Planet came about revo-lutionizing the way consumers booked travel services.Couchsurfing, staycation, eco-tourism these terms were never part of the online, urban diction-ary until the late 2000s.In the later end of the early 2000s, the aura of the so called shared economy set in with the tremendous success of sites such as Airbnb and Couchsurfing. These new age companies led by young, hot-blooded entrepre-neurs designed platforms to bring service providers and seekers to-gether with absolute ease.India was not left behind and is now a hotbed for service and technological innovation in the travel and tourism industry.India tourismAny nation's tourism industry can be compared to the proverbial two-sided coin. Where one face is of the government's undertak-ing and the other is of the private sector. Our tourism industry is poised to click a whopping $440 billion by the year 2027.The recently concluded na-tional budget reflects a fair bit of the potential. With reduction in certain slabs on GST for hotel tar-HIN MY OPINIONCONNECTING HOTELIERS TO THE ONLINE MARKETBy Anil Kumar Prasanna, CEO, AxisRooms
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