Jovago's Customer Services Week

Briefly tell us about Jovago

Jovago.pk is Pakistan’s no 1 online hotel booking portal that allows best prices for more than 2000 hotels in Pakistan. It aims to promote the tourism industry of Pakistan by providing easy access to traveling and offering best possible hotel rates that suit your budget.

We are working with the biggest selection of hotels / guest houses in Pakistan and our clients have positive things to say about us. Our team assists travelers from the day they visit our website until they check out from the hotel. We do all the work for our customers and ensure their travel needs are met. In this way, we encourage people to visit different places in Pakistan, which boosts not only the tourism industry, but also helps to correct the negative stereotypes and fears that people have about Pakistan.

As the head of customer services at Jovago, what do you think is the market potential for a travel related business like Jovago in Pakistan?

We have a lot of tourism potential since we lie on one of the most important trade routes of the world which make it an ideal location for trade and commerce with South East, West and Central Asia. With the recent investments in Gwadar port and the influx of Chinese investments in the form of the Pak-China Economic corridor, tourism within the country is expected to increase in the years ahead making it a very attractive hub for investments in tourism and hotel business. This, in addition to the fact that local demand of traveling within Pakistan is increasing year on year, with an expected number of 50+ million domestic tourists forecasted by PTDC, shows a lot of potential in the tourism industry and all travel related businesses. However, the negative perception of Pakistan due to security problems will continue to pose a challenge in the coming years.

What was the idea behind the celebration of Customer Celebration Week at Jovago?

The primary objective to celebrate Customer week was to bring different departments working under their own capacities to spend time together to better understand the journey that our customers are experiencing, and how each of us – regardless of the department in which we work – can help our customers have an amazing experience with Jovago. One of the top priorities at Jovago is to provide the best customer service and we want all our different departments to experience how we make this happen.

In what ways do you think Jovago better facilitates its customers from its competitors?

We make the difference from a classique Customer Service (which is about taking order and handling complaints) by creating trust not just for our customers but also for our esteemed Hotel partners. This is one of the primary reason why we don’t call our CS member an Agent. We call them our Travel Advisors. Our Travel Advisors (based on the country of the customer destination) have unique knowledge about hospitality industry, inventory of all kind of hotel (business, leisure, luxury or low costs etc.), transportation which enables them to facilitate our customers’ entire travel experience, not just any specific part of it.

In parallel, our Travel Advisors are providing innovating means of communication with hotels to support automation of the market.For example, we recently conducted a training workshop for our hotel partners on the use of Extranet web which helps them to be full in charge of managing all the bookings that they make via Jovago.

What do you think is the toughest part of your job to work as a head of customer service department?

The biggest challenge was to educate the small hotels to come onboard with us, and to explain to them that an online business is credible! They were very used to the concept of a physical travel agency. Also, changing consumer mindsets from booking through the traditional way via a travel agent, to online booking was initially a bit of a challenge. However, a lot of online businesses are now entering Pakistan, which has made the education and communication to consumers a little easier!

– Please share your views, on the tourist places and opportunities in Pakistan?

Pakistan has got a lot of attractive tourism spots. Especially the places in the Northern Areas of Pakistan like Naran Kaghan, Murree, and Nathia Gali have immense tourism potential due to its natural scenic beauty and serenity. There are also some emerging tourist destinations like Faisalabad, Hyderabad and places in interior Punjab which have a lot of historical monuments and sites that people can go and visit. I think the tourism potential already exists; it’s just that we need to create more awareness amongst our people and help them make an informed decision by making information available to them.

What are the main reasons for the people to consider Jovago instead of the manual hotel booking system?

When traveling to remote areas in Pakistan, people have to either go through a travel agent or ask families for references about places to stay. Travel agents don’t have as many options as we do, because we have a team that personally visits cities and onboards hotels and guest houses.

Another compelling reason is that everything on our website is real. Our team visits each and every property that is listed on our website, and take pictures which are directly uploaded on our website (we don’t believe in photoshop). All the facilities listed are also checked when the team goes, so it provides users a complete overview of the hotel or guest house they are signing up for – everything is transparent.

Tell us a bit about the hotels that you are working in accordance with?

We are working with hotels and guest houses of all price ranges. We have big name hotels such as Ramada, and other smaller ones which you probably have not heard about. Our team goes out and visits the hotels and guest houses who sign up with us, to verify if they exist and to make sure they are in a condition worth staying in. Obviously, the kind of hotel or guest house you chose to stay in depends on your budget, and the experience will also vary depending on where you stay. So, to answer your question, we work with all hotels and guest houses and do not discriminate based upon their stars as we want to provide accommodation that suits a variety of budgets to all Pakistani’s who want to travel and explore the country!

Can you explain in steps the procedure to book a hotel on Jovago?

Step 1: Gross Booking

The customer visits Jovago’s website, explores different options and makes a reservation on the website

Step 2: Valid Booking

The Customer Services agent calls the customer and the hotel to confirm the booking

Step 3: Reminder

The Customer Services agent make a reminder call to the guest about his booking

Step 4: Customer Stay

The customer goes to the hotel and enjoys their stay

Step 4: Customer Reviews and Feedback

After our customers stay, we call them up and ask them for reviews. Additionally, we strongly encourage them to write reviews on the website – we have a policy that every review will be uploaded, be it negative or positive.

With your experience in the tourism industry, what do you think are the key factors in developing tourism in countries like Pakistan?

For starters, there is a lack of awareness regarding the benefits of tourism in Pakistan. We must realize that if proper initiatives are taken to promote this sector, then our economy can benefit a great deal. The respective government bodies should conduct seminars to raise awareness; they can have tourism drives, and realize how important it is to exploit the potential of this employment generating industry.

At Jovago, we are running a blog which has top destinations to travel to and things to do when one is there. We also try to promote tourism via all our social media pages.

What is your opinion on cost-effective travel?

Traveling in Pakistan is considered to be a luxury by many. But traveling if planned properly can be quite affordable and is feasible for almost everyone. The requisite however is proper travel management. We at Jovago are constantly in touch with our customers to make travel easy and accessible for everyone by bringing every bit of accommodation online with the easiest and cheap way for customers to book it. We also keep close contact with hotels to give us the best price guarantee, which makes travel affordable for all. At Jovago we are focusing on mass tourism rather than individual tourism.