Yatin Patel, co-founder of Reservations.com, is passionate about providing a high level of service and value to his customers. His website allows users to effortlessly book affordable accommodation and plan their trip from a single online destination.

Yatin answered some questions about his website.

What inspired you to start Reservations.com?

We started Reservations.com after seeing a lack of human touch in the hotel booking industry. Every website looked the same, functioned the same and had a poor infrastructure for dealing with customer complaints or issues.

We knew that booking accommodation overseas can be a daunting, expensive and confusing process for many people. With this in mind, we worked hard to establish an alternative that is intuitive, provides great value and has excellent customer service mechanisms.

What have some of your biggest achievements been?

After our humble beginnings as nothing more than a domain name, we are all incredibly proud of the progress we have made over the last 5 years. After facilitating over 2.5 million reservations since our start, we are confident that we are on the right track and that our team works perfectly together.

How do you think your site has influenced the online travel industry?

We believe that Reservations.com sets a great example of how a hotel booking website should be run. With a seamless and intuitive users interface, highly affordable offers as well as a 24-7 customer service centre – it’s hard to do much better.

Where do you differ from your major competitors?

We set ourselves apart from the competition through our dedication to customer service and our commitment to securing the best possible offers for said customers. We are not simply satisfied with being another hotel booking site, we want to be #1 and our investment in customer service reflects that desire.

What was the biggest hurdle you needed to overcome with the website?

Because we did not start with any large investor support, we needed to ensure the business was generating a return as soon as possible. In some ways this was beneficial as it forced us to optimise every aspect of the business as we went rather than simply wait to audit it later on.

Do you have any travel tips?

Don’t be afraid to spend a little extra for the experience you want. Money comes and goes, memories last forever – don’t cheap out and get a something you won’t really enjoy.

Thank you Yatin for your time!
You can follow up with Yatin Patel at www.reservations.com