Why millennials are checking into hotels in their hometowns

For the last six months, Gopal Sharma has spent nearly two days every week at a hotel in his hometown Kolkata. The 29-year-old IT engineer is far from being a high flyer. Yet, since he stays on the city's outskirts, he often ends up booking a hotel every time he has a late meeting, is out partying, or stranded due to bad weather.

"It is more convenient because I don't have to spend 1.5 hours travelling all the way home to Howrah. Also, taking a cab costs almost the same," says Sharma, who typically books a room between Rs 700 and Rs 1,000. A growing number of millennials prefer to spend a night at a low-budget hotel to avoid traffic jams or even if they've had too much to drink and don't want to go back home. New data by hotel aggregator Oyo Rooms shows that 57% of all bookings between January and July this year were made just 24 hours prior to check-in. Gurgaon topped the chart, with 66% of bookings being made the same day . It was followed by Noida (65%), Chandigarh (64%) and Delhi (60%). Around 16% of bookings were made only one hour prior to check-in.

"Traditionally , you would stay in a hotel when you travelled to another city and didn't have relatives to stay with," says Burhanuddin Pithawala, head, conversions at Oyo Rooms. "Now, we see more hotels booked in the city of origin." For instance, Akshay Chatur vedi, who lives in Connaught Place, regularly books hotels when his meetings in Gurgaon run late. "I usually have pending work, which I will be too tired to finish by the time I reach, he explains. "After I check-in I can connect to the Internet, finish work, check out early morning and come back to the office the next morning when the roads are empty ."

Traffic jams regularly lead to a surge in bookings. "For instance, when there is a big concert like Justin Bieber or The Chainsmokers, people know there will be bad traffic, so there is a spike in hotel bookings," says Pithawala.

Mumbai-based Mehnaz Ali, 29, made nearly seven last-minute hotel stays this summer, every time she got late after a spell of shopping in Thane before marriage. Ali found the experience so convenient that she even used it after marriage. "A couple of weeks ago, when my husband and I had a huge fight, I ended up spending a night at the hotel on my own," Ali said.