Sailing with the tide with continued confidence
While the hospitality industry grapples with finding an answer to increase footfalls and occupancies to the pre-COVID levels, there are many other matters that hotel brands have to look at; among them, the important one is finance. TTJ touched base with a few hoteliers in various accommodation businesses on how they have planned their year ahead to control finances and strategies to boost their revenues for 2022. Though with high levels of uncertainty ahead, it seems they are focused on innovating while managing their way through the crisis and accelerating when the situation is adept.
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has made a profound and significant impact on the hospitality industry and its stakeholders, and to counteract it, one of the major factors in 2021 was flexibility in commercial terms and conditions, given the unpredictable times.
Puneet Dhawan, Senior VP Operations, Accor India & South Asia, says, “2021 has taught us several lessons, and while we combated the unprecedented events, we also witnessed a significant improvement in occupancies and bookings towards the latter half of the year. As a company, we have furthermore incorporated several cost-saving measures. We are exploring new trends like sub-leasing, creative and optimum utilisation of space in hotels. For example, we convert meeting rooms at the hotel into offices that could be rented out to startups.
“We are also taking a renewed approach towards our existing partnerships and campaigns and continue to provide our guests the most memorable experiences curated by our loyalty program, ALL Accor Live Limitless. As per ALL’s current offer, guests get to save 25 per cent on stays with a chance to win 1 million reward points when they stay at any of Accor’s participating hotels and resorts across India and Sri Lanka.”
The face of travel has changed completely, priorities have shifted, and the future of the hospitality business is now based on a new belief with an inclination towards the highest standards of safety amongst guests. “For this reason, we have implemented ALLSAFE across all our properties, which represents industry leading cleanliness and prevention standards, launched in association with Bureau Veritas. The label rolled out across
all properties covers critical areas such as enhanced cleaning protocols, enhanced staff training, new guest contact measures, enhanced food safety measures, and much more,” assures Dhawan.
Through effective communication with their partners, clients, and management, along with high-level engagement, the properties can contrive a strategy to help them navigate the new environment. Dhawan further shares, “We have currently placed our focus on domestic leisure travel, staycations and workcations and expect our properties that are geographically covering popular leisure destinations to cater to the diverse demand. Additionally, we are exploring inventive approaches in the F&B segment with concepts like cloud kitchen, home deliveries, and DIY food kit.”
Accor also looks forward to some of their much-awaited new openings like Novotel in New Delhi City Centre and Jodhpur, an ibis in Mumbai Thane, and another in Hebbal Bangalore. However, they continue to monitor the ever-evolving situation to adapt to any new restrictions,
trends, and requirements that their guests may have.
At Sayaji Hotels, they have survived during the toughest times while exploring and evolving themselves to deliver the best of hospitality. Raoof Dhanani, Managing Director, Sayaji Hotels, says, “The foreseeing of the corporates opening up soon in this quarter is still bleak. In response to the market conditions, we have started exploring different business sectors and focus on various other segments, such as sports-oriented groups check-in. We serve different aspects, but we also master our service deliveries with check-ins for young individuals and sports personalities. Our prime focus is the Corporates and our adaptability has paid us well for going over long runs with these segments.”
The plans and strategies go hand in hand, but the market scenario plays a vital role. Sayaji Hotels focuses more on the FIT and family segments looking for vacations and celebrations with their close and dear ones. “We also focus on
social events in banquets and social event days for capitalisation in terms of F&B and combo stay packages. Taping the regular corporates and MICE gives us a fruitful business to emphasise upon. The luxury stay packages paired with leisure services to offer are perfect for capitalising on staycations which are in trend these days,” informs Dhanani.
For Fairmont Jaipur, it will be a continuous endeavour in 2022 to manage cash flow throughout the year while exploring innovative ways of unleashing the hotel’s creative business propositions and exploring smart and ethical partnerships with like-minded stakeholders. Rajiv Kapoor, General Manager, Fairmont Jaipur, says, “To keep sustainability as a consistent benchmark, one of our endeavours is to achieve continual usage of recyclable energy sources via our solar panels and electrical charging stations powered by Sunfuel. Also, we will be looking into training teams for multitasking and providing cross-cultural exposure for better servicing and enhanced guest relations.
“To boost up our revenues for 2022, we will look forward to explore business within and beyond feeder markets via curation of exclusive, meaningful experiences for multi-generational travellers. To nurture lasting relations with all new guests and rekindle with previous guests. Providing competitive rates and offers to our guests for indulgent, palatial vacations and improving and elevating experiences with finer attention to detail in departments like the lounge area, cigar shop, spa and health club at Fairmont Jaipur,” adds Kapoor.
By merging homestays into domestic tourism, COVID has succeeded in altering traveller’s dynamics. Travel is no longer regarded as a luxury but rather an essential
part of life. And having a comfortable place to stay, much like at home, is an important element of traveling, which homestays have been giving to the traveller for a long time. Presently, homestays offer their guests playgrounds, rooms, kitchens, theatres, gardens, swimming pools, chefs and laundry, high-speed wi-fi, other amenities, etc. Due to the overwhelming demand, Vista Rooms have already onboarded nearly 60 homes in India and 10 in Dubai.
On this, Amit Damani, Co-Founder, Vista Rooms, shared, “We’ve had to respond to the increase in demand for villas due to a shift in how people travel and even live. We’ve partnered with local specialists across all regions to expand our F&B, tours, and activities offerings. Before COVID, a few of our homes featured environmentally friendly features like solar electricity, organic vegetables, rainwater collection, waste management (no plastic or other environmentally detrimental materials are used), and so on. This has been a long-term policy that we have implemented before the pandemic to ensure that we produce local jobs and sustainably deliver authentic experiences. Both are good for the environment and very cost-effective in the long run.”
Vista Rooms’ goal is to make every moment of their guests and stay with them memorable. Whether it’s fantastic meals, tailored experiences, or transporting local delicacies to them while they spend quality time with their friends and family, there is something for everyone at Vista. “We intend to delight each and every guest, whether it’s with fantastic meals, personalised experiences, or delivering local delicacies while they spend quality time with their friends and family at our vacation homes. In the hospitality industry, service apartments have become the
norm. As the category leader, we are defining the standards for serviced villas. Our goal is to grow our network from 500 villas to over 1000,” shares Damani.
The Fern Hotels & Resorts have successfully opened 13 new hotels in the pandemic year 2021-22. Four new hotels are planned to open in the next four months, taking their total operational hotels to 88. They are on track to reach their goal of 100 hotels by 2023. Noshir A Marfatia, Senior Vice President - Sales & Marketing, The Fern Hotels & Resorts, expressed, “Almost all our resorts have done higher revenues in 2021 than even 2019 and our business city hotels are seeing growth spurts that are encouraging. Being leading environmentally sensitive hotels, we provide a product that is comfortable, safe, hygienic, offers all modern amenities and luxuries, and all these at price points that are affordable, giving our guests great value for money. We offer a range of stay options and packages to suit all requirements. That is why our occupancy levels are high, with repeat guests being our biggest brand ambassadors.”
“In these uncertain times, our hotel occupancies and revenues have been roller-coastering in sync with the pandemic surges, from all-time highs to the lowest of lows. Based on the trends we saw since last September; we are budgeting for 2022 with expectations of a revival and maybe even a boom. Our services and offerings are being calibrated back to fullservice levels, to meet guests’ growing expectations. However, all our hotel operations are geared to keep expenses in proportion to revenues. So, if business drops in any month(s) due to the pandemic restrictions etc, then all our hotels are geared to proportionately roll back their expenses as well, to keep the operations viable,” concludes Marfatia.