Level playing field for local players, demands pan-India restro body

The demand was raised citing the growing divide between online players and brick-mortar shops

Alleging that online e-commerce players have created a hostile environment for the hospitality industry, the Federation of Hotel and Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) wrote to the Centre

for including the hospitality industry in the newly-introduced Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).

Rolled out recently across five cities on a pilot basis, the ONDC is a network based on open protocol that will enable local commerce across segments to be discovered and engaged by any networkenabled application. The initiative will allow local merchants to save data of buyers to build credit history and reach out to them with their best offerings. It will also provide the local players a level playing field and enable them to compete with the e-commerce giants of the world.

Complimenting the Union commerce minister Piyush Goyal for the “revolutionary step”, the FHRAI remarked the initiative will go a long way in giving an impetus to the retail ecosystem in the country.

“We are sure that ONDC will change the whole dynamics of the online retail market in the country, benefitting the local sellers to leverage the advantage of reaching out to endless customers,” it commented.

Appealing to widen the ONDC’s ambit for the travel and hospitality sector, it said, “It is pertinent to mention that the hospitality industry has been facing tough challenges due to the monopolistic conduct and unethical business practices of online travel aggregators and food service aggregators.”

In its letter, the FHRAI asserted that the major issues the industry faces from these agencies range from charging high rates of commissions, deep discounting, unreasonable additional charges, breach of agreements, default of payments, and overbooking and underbooking of rooms.

“There is no doubt in my head that the online aggregators have created an unhealthy ecosystem for the sector. The restaurants suffer due to year-round heavy discounts funded mostly by them, which in turn impacts tax collection.We have also seen retail investors lose heavily due to the massive value erosion in shares of recently gone public food aggregator.” _ Anurag Katriar, National Restaurant Association of India trustee

"Being the sector's apex body, the FHRAI is the voice of the hospitality industry when it comes to reporting nefarious activities of the OTA and FSA. We have complained to the CCI against Oyo and MMT. Finding merit in our complaint, the CCI is investigating the OTAs. While the ONDC's formation is a welcome move as it aims to create opportunities by supporting micro, small and medium enterprises.” _ Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, FHRAI vice president