Travel tech: Bangalore-based startup HolidayIQ offers geofencing and video reviews

The travel tech community is growing and amid the biggies like Tripadvisor and several other travel info cum booking sites, smaller startups have started burgeoning in the space. HolidayIQ is one such startup headquartered in Bangalore, and according to the company, it’s the way it works and nifty app features that distinguish it from the rest. “HolidayIQ is a traveller community where travellers give feedback and advice. Therefore, all advice is from travellers just like you. It has the best availability of hotel rooms since it has inventory from across a large number of vendors and also provides the best deals for hotel rooms: It allows price comparison across online travel agencies (OTAs) and Tour operators,” explains founder and CEO Hari Nair.  The most recent feature and a key highlight of the app is the new Geofencing ability. Calling it a first of its kind, HolidayIQ claims to be India’s first travel community to launch this feature incorporated in the app. The feature ensures travellers have access to live updates on sightseeing places while travelling. “The feature works for 1,200 destinations, 20,000 hotels and 10,000 sightseeing options helping users on the go, through shareability of reviews related to destination, sightseeing and hotels. It detects traveller location and triggers notifications. Alerting the traveller on the destination, hotel, sightseeing around the vicinity as per HolidayIQ reviewers, recommending travellers on the 5 things which are a must/ should and shouldn’t be done at the given location,” Nair explains.  Another notable feature is video reviews. With the shift towards video, this really makes sense. Talking about the new Geofencing ability, Nair said that it helps travellers access first-hand information to remote destinations, alternative accommodation options, multiple sightseeing options across India. The app offers video reviews, travel feed and blog entries to help travellers as well. “The video reviews feature for instance, gives a different user interface (UI) and experience for generating video reviews for hotels and destinations. With this feature, the user can also stream videos and photos from hotel and sightseeing places, making it easier for others to collect overall ratings of the place being reviewed. The travel feed feature enables the user to “follow” friends and travellers to get updates of their reviews, badges, blog mentions and “been here” actions as cards on the feed,” he adds. According to Nair, it’s the technology that is being instrumental in domestic travel planning. “Travellers demand access to remote destinations, offbeat locations and alternative accommodations with the increase in interest in travel among the youth. From a surge in smartphones to increase in apps and now smart-travel through geofencing technology, the travel industry is currently witnessing a change in travel behavior. As more travellers opt for video reviews on accommodation options and destinations, we see the in-trip planning trend is poised to grow further,” he added. Besides, the app lets you compare more than 50,000 hotels in India, and lookup deals from more than 50 partners for over 2,000 destinations in India. Then, the users can lookup for ‘Things To Do’ and other information that will allow them to plan the day. HolidayIQ gets over 12 million visitors per month, and is currently a team of 150 members. It has raised funding from Tiger Global, Accel Partners and Makemytrip.com.