Online aggregator of homestays Stayzilla.com has signed an MoU with Tourism Corporation of Gujarat Ltd (TCGL) to jointly promote and market homestays and alternate stays in Gujarat.

Homestay is a stay option wherein guests (travellers) can rent a room in the home of a local family (host) or the entire house.

Under this agreement, Stayzilla and Gujarat Tourism will share the current base of homestays on each other’s digital platforms to bring more awareness on homestays in Gujarat.

Stayzilla will also aid verification procedures and jointly promote the concept of homestays in the State. All homestays registered with TCGL will receive technological and operational support to run.

​Besides, Stayzilla ​and TCGL will jointly conduct education and training sessions for TCGL registered homestays on best practices such as online usage, content management, operations and expense management, which will benefit the hosts of the homestays.

The company is closely working with various state tourism departments for joint promotion and marketing of homestays.

Stayzilla has recently signed MoUs with the Madhya Pradesh State Tourism Development Corporation and Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board to enhance homestay concept among travellers in these states.

There have been around 600 workshops conducted pan India, at various locations, with hosts from different corners, out of which about 80 workshops were conducted in various towns and cities of Gujarat.

This has helped in boosting homestay supply in Gujarat over the last 6months, thereby bringing up the number of verified homestays in the State to over 400.

Ankit Rastogi, Vice President, Marketplace, Stayzilla said, “We, at Stayzilla, have maintained that the key to increasing tourism is the availability of quality and affordable rooms, pan India. The shortage of rooms cannot be solved efficiently by constructing hotels in a short frame of time, which is required. We are excited about the fact that this is the realisation that various State Governments in conjunction with the Central Government have come to. Gujarat has emerged as one of the most popular states in the country for travel, thus playing a significant role in India’s tourism potential. This MoU, like the others, will help in building a vibrant ecosystem for homestays in Gujarat.”

Stayzilla, which has over 8,000 homestay units in its portfolio, is working at the grassroot level for unlocking more and more numbers of registered homestays in the country. The company is conducting town hall activities across 4,500 cities to create awareness about homestays and alternate stays.

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