HolidayIQ: Creating a niche

Hari Nair, CEO, HolidayIQ started exploring the possibilities of venturing into the tourism business in 2002-2003, however, he realised that there were hardly any opportunities that could be capitalised and turned into great business models. Nair wanted a business model where capital investments would be low but the impact high. Nair always found the Lonely Planet very interesting, as it was treated as ‘God’ by travellers who wanted to do their research and travel on their own. In 2004, Nair moved out of his corporate career and started his own venture – indiaresortssurvey.com. The business model of this start up was compiling reviews of various small resorts and hotels in India and publishing books on the same.

“The idea was to offer small resorts and hotels at domestic destinations to end consumers and the original plan was to collect reviews on the website and publish them in the form of books. Slowly as users starting writing reviews on small resorts and hotels, they also requested that we showcase the reviews on the website.