Over 2,000 TS hotels decide to cancel business ties with food service aggregators

Hyderabad: Over 2,000 hotels in Telangana have agreed to cancel business ties with foodservice aggregators, barring Zomato, if their demands are not addressed. The hoteliers under the umbrella of TS Hotel Association have asked aggregators to remove unreasonable discounts offered to customers, review agreements and reduce the commission percentages. If not, all agreements will stand cancelled.

Meanwhile, Zomato has suspended its current policy ties with its business partners (restaurants/ hotels) beginning from August 20 and agreed to review it.

In an official communication, the CEO of Zomato Mr Rakesh Ranjan said, “We recently rolled out a policy to align the interest of users, Zomato and restaurants towards better user experiences which weren’t received well by some segments of the industry. It is our job to listen to you and make the right amends. With immediate effect, we are suspending the policy communicated to you.”

The CEO has communicated that the company will revert after collecting more feedback and any charges (money) that were levied on August 20 will be reversed.

The letter written by the CEO was shared by the TS Hotel Association. The body met on Tuesday to decide the future course of action. Representing TS HA Joint Secretary Mr. Sampath T said, “We are all one and united (referring to hotels, Irani tea centre and Biryani centres) and agreed to logout food delivery application. Zomato agreed to reconsider their schemes. We will wait for their response and decide our future course of action. The same communication has been given to all aggregators.”

“Our whole point is that neither the restaurants nor the consumers are the benefiting from such unfair trade practices. They are charging heavy delivery charges to the consumers and unfair commission charges and lot of hidden costs. We request all consumers to look into the billing practices of all the food aggregators,” he further said.

TS- HA have joined the list of other state associations who have suspended their business ties with FSAs.