With the rise in domestic tourism, the hospitality sector that was most affected by Covid-19, is now on the road to recovery. Travel Trade Insider spoke to Mr. Joyjit Chakravorty, General Manager, Hilton Garden Inn, Lucknow about views on the growth of the hospitality industry and hotel’s growth plans in 2021…
Q 2020 has been the most difficult time for the hospitality industry. How has it impacted your business? Also please share your views on the overall impact of the pandemic on the travel & hospitality sector?
The hospitality industry has undoubtedly been affected by COVID-19. During the spring, as lockdown restrictions, shelter-in-place orders and regulations were put into effect, businesses were prohibited from operating resulting in shut down or suspensions. The lockdown mostly has come to an end, but travel restrictions and other strict measures still being the necessity is impacting the top line. Though Lucknow has been going towards clearer skies we are experiencing a sharp drop in corporate business travel and MICE business is on a standstill.
Overall impact in our travel and hospitality business is one of the hardest-hit in the COVID-19 pandemic. All initiatives, appeals and efforts from the hospitality fraternity to the Govt. of India for assistance has not yielded much results. As different countries shut their borders to protect their citizens, global tourism came to a complete halt. This hugely impacted the entire tourism ecosystem, resulting in a significant drop in movement and occupancy in the airline and hospitality industries. While the numbers have started improving from Q3 as compared to the early days of the pandemic and I strongly believe that the worst is over and we are moving towards a new sunrise. While enough has been spoken on the catastrophic impacts on the travel and hospitality industry I would also like to highlight the other broader aspects in our industry, curated packages as per the need of the customers is on all time rise, focus shifted towards local tourism exploring our own neighbourhood, rekindling the experiences of nature and urban tourism leading to the reintroduction of Staycations – taking a vacation in your own cities, rightsizing our manpower resources and going back to basic of cash flow.
Q How has been the response in 2020 and what are your plans for 2021 to attract the travellers who are planning their upcoming holidays? Have you noticed a trend of weekend holidays in December 2020 and January 2021?
With the new year 2021, we believe that a new era of opportunities has arrived. We as Hilton, have been working on a mix of elements that cater to our customers who are open to exploring these new options.
These included :
- Great Small Breaks & weekend staycations – Encouraging a small break with your family and welcome a great gathering of experiences, and take a vacation in your own city.
- Khushiyaan by Hilton Garden Inn Lucknow – Concentrating on home delivery around two KMs by our team members, an initiative to do customized caterings at home and offices for a limited number of guests.
- Tie-up with local partners to promote local cuisines, encourage local products and & the age-old heritage of the City of Nawabs.
- Social media played the most important role in depicting the actual guest-experience of our customers online, to implement this- we created a special campaign called the ‘Guest Diaries at HGIL’ where people can see the actual experiences of our guests at the hotel. Along with this, we also focussed on active local PR coverages in print and television ( local news channels) to promote our hotel.
And of course, the safety & hygiene measures under the global industry-leading program called the ‘Hilton CleanStay’, which builds upon Hilton’s already high standards of housekeeping and hygiene to ensure Hilton guests enjoy an even cleaner and safer stay, helped us to stay ahead of the competition. Educating our associated partners about the same and SOPs’ with travel agents, corporates and other business partners made them overcome their fear, and gave them the confidence to come and experience our enhanced hospitality. The online mediums of guest feedbacks, reviews and content has always remained a focus area.
The curve is going upwards as we progress and Hilton Garden Inn Lucknow has been doing 70% and above occupancy for the last two months. However, we have notice a trend in the consumer behaviour as compared to last year – safety conscious, preference of healthy and local food, hygiene and cleanliness has come up as the priority irrespective of family or travelling for business. Road travel is the preferred mode now and people appreciate personalization & isolation as compared to traveling in groups. They are avoiding crowded places and doing a thorough research of guests reviews before bookings.
Q What kind of trends you have noticed in December 2020 and what you expect as a trend in 2021? Especially pertaining to the Lucknow market.
People are still a little reluctant to go out as freely as they used to do, but that isn’t stopping them from heading out for a weekend outing or a celebration that matters to them. With the vaccine being rolled out globally, people seem to be much more relieved in 2021, and are already planning to step out.
To summarise the customer & business trends noticed, especially keeping in mind the Lucknow market, we’d like to conclude :
- A shifting focus on food delivery from known and certified establishments.
- Preference for local food & culture – Our food promotion ‘Shaam-e-Awadh’ was launched at a much later stage, where we were bringing the experience of the city’s famous old lanes & the cuisine under one roof, offering the customers what they hadn’t been able to do during and after the pandemic. That was a runaway success with loads of appreciation and traction.
- Getting familiar with AI and facial recognition in service operations
- The younger segment of the guests seemed to be developing an interest in boutique retail stores and hotels
- Customer loyalty issues – A very important factor for customer satisfaction, and the importance of driving the correct practices to achieve genuine positive reviews and feedbacks.
- Last but not the least, Safety & hygiene concern issues during travelling.
- Celebration & eating out is still limited to close people and families – Large gatherings are still avoided
On the biggest challenge for the revival of the hospitality industry, we believe the same trends are bound to continue for the time being.
Q What kind of traffic you have been reaching – Domestic or International? Has the surge in domestic tourism helped your hotel to stabilize your business?
Lucknow was always driven by a domestic market with limited international travellers. Hilton Garden Inn Lucknow being strategically located near the national highway and close to the airport gave us the edge to capture the travellers coming for the Buddhist circuit, stopover en-route to Varanasi and Agra and now with Ayodha developing as a world-class city. We are experiencing a surge in a new segment of business which we surely would like to nurture further. Apart from the leisure business, with continued support from local authorities, Lucknow is attracting a lot of Bollywood shoots and getting popular in attracting Start-ups, project movement, world-class retail business, weddings and city events. Domestic travel has absolutely contributed more than 90% over the last 3 months and we don’texpect to see much change in that.
The challenges have helped in the exploration of promoting the city as a tourist place, more than before, and highlighting and marketing it with a fresh point of view for people to re-explore Lucknow.
Q. What activities are you planning to promote the hotel to B2B and B2C segments? Are there any special offers for travellers and any incentives for travel agents?
It is important to get your B2B sales on strong foundations. Hotel B2B sales have changed a lot in recent years, evolving to a more digitalized area. However, we believe that the basic and traditional concepts still stand. For eg. – we haveintroduced a concept of Hybrid Events which brings the experience of physical and virtual events together and its growing rapidly.
B2C sales, reaching and influencing consumers involves an ever-increasing digital focus. Once you have a clear understanding of your market, distribution channels and pricing options, it’s time to start developing the Hotel’s Online Visibility and once built, utilizing it to maximum.
Just to site an example, – During the pandemic, most of the brands stopped posting on their Social media channels, but we believe that was the time to actually connect with the customers and bring in an emotional touch since all of us were in this together. To communicate this, we launched a social media campaign “ Nostalgia” where the aim was to take our users on a nostalgic trip to their city ‘Lucknow’ to relive its essence. The communication talked about wishing to relive this beautiful city’s essence again when the times are right.
One should also fine-tune their booking process, curate mindful promotions that cater to the exact need of the customers. Our world renowned HHonors Reward loyalty program has only grown and continues to expand, encouraging repeat business which is probably the biggest promoting tool for B2C mode. We are still working on the offers and incentives for our fellow travel partners and hopefully would be coming up very soon.
Q. What has been your business strategy to retain your customers during Covid times. How have you encouraged your brand loyalty amongst consumers?
To retain the customers during the COVID times, we majorly focused on :
Optimizing opportunities in digital marketing – Digital mediums have become a necessity in current times, and the same is always there in mind whenever any communication is to be rolled out. It has facilitated in helping us make our customers aware of our offerings and has made it easier for us to reach out to the customers & vice versa.
- Personalization of guests experiences – As a Hilton team member, we have always believed in the warmth of hospitality that our team members provide with their bright hearted attitude towards our services. We connect with our guests from their pre-arrival phase, by the time they reach our hotel, we are already aware of their purpose of visit, their food and beverage preferences, rooms and other likes and dislikes – hence that helps us to plan and curate an experience in a much more customized manner.
- Multiple options for guests to share their feedback, and give them a more streamlined experience.
- Being flexible in pricing and cancellation policies to cater to their needs
- Concentrating on repeat business, and retaining them.
- Work closely and supporting our Business partners.
- Enhanced Safety & Hygiene Measures – the most important factor in the mind of a traveller during these times
- Going and promoting local cuisines in F&B experiences
Q Is there anything you would like to add
A focus on environmental sustainability by hospitality isn’t new, but the degree to what our guests expects (and prefer) has changed now – the same needs to adapted and promoted. The changing workforce and their tasks has become very dynamic, technology makes global workforce possible and we need to develop ourselves to cater to their modified expectations. The digital natives, Generation Z, the gig economy is fast picking up and our industry needs to realign to avoid missing the bus. Co-living, Co-working, vacation rentals, mobile hotels and pods would soon be in our space and we have to find the ways of coexistence. AI based pricing, mobile check in, fitness on the road, robot room services, blazing fast internet contactless payments RFID tech, mobile concierge to name a few are all the new trends now, but soon they are going to become more commonplace. Hence let’s all get ready collectively to embrace the new emergence.