Book your Rural Escape

Rural Tourism Network Enterprise which launched its website in the first week of December, 2009, has been steadily progressing towards answering one of the ultimate queries on every traveler’s mind – “I don’t know where to go” – by giving options and choices hitherto unheard of.

Though in its infancy, the website has managed to garner a top-line of Rs 1.5 Million by end of Jan ‘10.  Starting with the Sindhudurg district, RTNE now covers three districts in the Konkan belt offering 132 unexplored properties, with an aim to offer 1000 such home-stay properties on its portal by end of March ‘10.  It also plans to scale up to cover 15 different regions across the country by March next year.

Nachiket Mor, Bindu Ananth and Deepthi Reddy who had visited RTNE’s operation on the ground and interacted with the team and home-stay property owners to get a ground level assessment of things also stressed on the need to focus on scaling-up and reaching varied geographies apart from the ones being served right now.

Building on its unique offering of rural destinations, RTNE has tied up with partners like Bharat Homestay, Konkan Yatra, HolidayIQ and is in talks with Make my Trip to explore options for synergy.

As with larger plans to grow and scale, it is easy to be swayed by the big picture and miss out on the critical part of ‘listening’ to the customer. To avoid such pitfalls and constantly refine services, RTNE has engaged with a Chennai based company to collect feedback through IVR from customers who have booked and stayed through the RTNE website.

With more uncharted destinations on offer, the wandering traveler might just get his perfect getaway in a place he never thought existed – Escapism, perhaps the rural way.