Maharashtra government to strike deal with Airbnb to attract international tourists

Mumbai city news: Airbnb will showcase properties of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) across the state on its portal.

The Maharashtra government will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with online room rental company Airbnb on Tuesday to sell Maharashtra tourism to a wider clientele across the globe.

Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis (HT File)

With the agreement, Airbnb will showcase properties of the Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) across the state on its portal, to ensure more bookings for its properties.

Airbnb operates in more than 191 countries, offering verified online users options of entire apartments, rooms and hotels, or even house boats across the world. It has more than 1.5 million listed properties. From a startup, Airbnb has become the third most valuable venture capital-backed company in the world.

The Maharashtra Tourism Development Corporation (MTDC) has been looking for partners to develop resorts on its open land, as well as improve and standardise the ones it already has. The MTDC has also been looking to get private players on board to market its unsold rooms.

The Devendra Fadnavis-government has been persistently trying to improve and market Maharashtra tourism better and bring in ease of doing business in a number of tourism-related sectors.