The good news
to open up, we will realise that luxury has taken a new meaning. Just being out of their homes and be able to meet their friends and family will be luxury. People will get into their cars and drive to the nearest holiday destination. That in itself will be luxury for them,” he says.
With international borders closing, domestic tourists will become the main target audience and any kind of revenue will come from domestic tourists, says Dr Bhatia. “And why not – our cities are as big as some of the European countries. We need to work on domestic packages and look at a more localised audience rather than a globalised audience, at least for the short term.”
Bring in some collaboration
More collaboration between the stakeholders seems to be the popular sentiment. Sharma says, “With the growth of technology, whether it is an airline or a hotel, the idea is to get as much direct business as possible. As a result, there is very little collaboration between the various industry groups. This has led to the birth of these mega booking sites. So rather than working with many agents, hotels work with just couple of online sites. So we as hoteliers are also at fault because we didn’t build that partnership with the travel industry. Nevertheless, there is no inopportune to rebuild it.”
Highlighting the travel agent’s strengths, Sharma adds that what they can do, certainly no hotel can do individually – the ability to package experiences. “Unfortunately, I have not seen that kind of expertise being translated into domestic packaging. What agents can start doing is build their database, have more social media presence, and market yourself hyper locally. Only those who can turn this current situation into an opportunity will be able to survive. Besides, luxury is different for different people. Even a good clean room can be luxury for some at times,” he says.
Sharing an example, he speaks of a tour operator who changed his business model to start doing school groups with India itineraries with a 30 per cent mark-up. “So there is a market out there for quality experiences, it's all about the packaging.”
Airlines: The nodal points
In all this, one stakeholder that has a very important role to play is the airlines. Kumar says, “We have added 22 destinations over the last 18 months and half of these destinations primarily see domestic tourist traffic whether it is Jodhpur, Gaya, Shirdi or Aurangabad. Shirdi for instance was not connected by any other airline earlier. This shows that whenever you fly into a new market, there is a huge opportunity to tap and to package its experiences. We believe that if you’re getting into a new market, provide connectivity from all major cities so you can bring in a lot of traffic from different parts of the country.” Of the 93 airports in India that can accommodate narrow-body domestic operations, IndiGo touches down on 63 of them.
There has been a continuous increase in domestic tourist visits, with the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of domestic tourist visits to all states/UTs from 1991 to 2018 being 12.61%. In fact, 2018 witnessed a growth of 11.9% in domestic tourist visits over the year 2017. But the question remains: how much are they spending per trip this?
Dr Bhatia concurs with Sanjay Kumar. “Our hotel in Rishikesh has guests coming in from all over the country, thanks to the Dehradun airport. It is now being upgraded to get international flights as well. That gives a huge impetus to domestic tourists coming into the Uttarakhand region,” he says.
Changing tracks, Dr Bhatia states that one of the reasons why India didn’t have too many Covid-19 cases was because we didn’t have many foreign tourists coming in at the time. “Whatever guests we had in terms of luxury were domestic tourists. In fact, over the last four to five years, we have seen that the quality and the ability to pay by domestic tourists have gone up tremendously. When we opened our first hotel five years ago, we were hardly getting any domestic tourists. But this has changed over the last couple of years,” he reveals.
More co-operation, touch-points fewer
Meanwhile, as the nation slowly tackles Covid-19, Dr Bhatia has already put into place certain measures that will encourage travellers to stay there. “As a group we have already taken some steps keeping social distancing in mind. We have developed an app that can be used to pre-order meals at our restaurants, check-out, use laundry service, etc. The new norm for group travel will also come into place. Weddings, for instance, will be very different. The government has mandated the number of people attending weddings,” he says.
Amidst all this, he continues, the travel agency is here to stay for sure. “For a simple reason – hotels don’t know the domestic tourist. The small agency has access to them in their local neighbourhood and I don’t think that’s going to change.”
Sharma agrees. “The travel agents have access to database, or the ability to create it. You can’t offer a luxury product also be luxury. For instance, I recently did a walking tour of the Jama Masjid with a small boutique agency that gives a lovely guide. It was fabulous. There is some outstanding talent out there. All they need to do is understand what their client’s aspirations are, and use social media to reach them directly. It is not easy, but it is possible. They don’t have to be dependent on anyone. It is indeed time to relook at how you do business. My suggestion to agents is to move their focus to packaging experiences and circuits,” Sharma says.
Post COVID-19
Will travel bounce back? Sharma is optimistic. He says, “India is a very big market. Yes, there is a pain in the economy right now but one of the reasons why the Indian economy will outshine others is because our debt levels as a family is very low as compared with western countries. In India, we have a certain family structure, and we tend to save a lot more in the middle class. So travel will not stop. One of the main expenditures a family makes after meeting the story for India in the long term continues to be robust. I see great opportunity. We only need to align our thought processes and products to the change in demand and meet the requirement for every segment.”
He also takes a question from the audience on the possibility of high fares in future and
adds, “Fares over the last 15 years have crashed below 45 per cent in this country despite the inflation. In fact, India continues to have the lowest fares in the world despite having a high cost structure.
It is lower than that of Malaysia, EasyJet and even Ryanair.
So I don’t expect the fare structure to change drastically post COVID-19.”
The parting shot from Dr Bhatia are words of solidarity. “These are difficult times for small agents as well as big hotels so everyone is in this together. Until travel restarts, I would suggest being in touch with your customers on a regular basis. Travel is something which can never go out of fashion. It’s just a matter of time. In the meantime, create packages within the cities as I think it will open up first. Configure yourself to the new normal,” he says.
Sharma on the other hand lists down top few picks that he would want the government to extend to the travel industry. “Tourism will recover. There is a short and medium term pain but there is a need to evolve. The industry definitely needs some assistance to recover