Tuesday, January 23, 2007

HCity is Hypermarket for Hotels

GROWTH of HCity Sdn Bhd's online business has been gradual but satisfactory.

Chief executive officer Lee Lai Huat said that 95% of its customers were now from overseas, with the majority from Britain, the United States, Australia and parts of the Middle East.

He said there was a 30% return rate of customers so far.

The company reaches its 90,000-plus clients via a subscription newsletter.

As for the hotels it has tied up with, about 70% of them are in Europe, 15% in Australia and New Zealand and 10% in the United States.

In Malaysia, HCity Sdn Bhd has tied up with about 200 hotels.

There is more to come, as this year, Lee targets to add 2,000 hotel properties.

“We will focus on the United States and Europe. As this is also Visit Malaysia Year, we are also looking to add more Malaysian hotels to our network.

“There are an estimated 2,000 hotels in the country, and we only have links to a tenth of them,” he said.

Lee’s dream is to build the company into an entity that links up to about 50,000 hotels around the world.

“At 10,000 hotels, we’re like a hotel supermarket. Multiply that five times, and we can be a big player like Hotels.com,” he said.

For the financial year ended Dec 31, 2005, the business generated US$25mil in transactions, which equalled 190,000 room nights. (No figures are available for the last financial year yet.)

Looking forward, though, Lee is targeting a 40% increase in transaction value. The business, according to him, is in a high growth stage.

WEBSITE : http://www.holidaycity.com/


Source : STAR
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