IDS Softwares eyes govt tourism projects

Shahani Fatima, Chennai
Business Standard
Bangalore-based hospitality software solutions firm IDS Softwares Private Limited is targeting government tourism projects to boost growth.

During the first quarter, the company added Madhya Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation and Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Development Corporation (Citco) as clients. “Around 40 hotels under the Madhya Pradesh tourism department and Citco were centralised using our software and we are in talks with tourism departments of eastern states as well,” said Sivaprasad G, deputy general manager, IDS Softwares.

This apart, the two-decade-old company is eyeing an addition of 500 more hotels this fiscal. “There is a huge opportunity for managed services as the automated system will feed complaints and queries from different rooms in the hotel to a central server and will reduce the dependence on manual labour,” he said. Of the 50-odd hotel chains that use IDS products now, only 27 use managed services like ‘quality management’ softwares.

According to Sivaprasad, expansion in existing markets like Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Costa Rica is fuelled by the company’s strategy of adding mid-level hotel chains. “The volume growth in this category is more than the high-end hotel chains. In the present economic scenario, volume growth is critical for niche software players like us,” he said.

The company offers its solutions to around 1,700 hotels apart from clubs, restaurants and resorts globally and has a presence in West Asia, south Asia and Africa. Of the 1,700, only around 100 hotels are in the five-star level.

The company is also expanding its service portfolio and has subscribed to GDS interface systems like Galileo to update on net the room vacancies in its client hotels. “There is a 40 percent shift to web-based hotel reservations globally. So we are keen to provide exposure to our clients by interacting with the GDS interface systems,” he said. The GDS interface systems provide data on hotels and room vacancies to various travel portals.

Apart from this, the company has launched the French version of its software to add customers in French-speaking nations like Senegal and also to foray into the European market.