A range to reckon with

For Accor the idea is to offer choices for travellers in terms of varied options of stay and experiences with a host of properties in different genres across the country.

Nisha Verma

Puneet Dhawan, Senior Vice President Operations, India and South Asia, Accor, has claimed that the company was expanding even during the pandemic. “In the last two years of the pandemic, from a hospitality industry point of view, from Accor, we have more than 50 properties in 16 key cities within India, ranging from The Raffles in Udaipur, which opened in August in the middle of COVID wave last year, right up to a smart economy brand with Interglobe Hospitality called the ibis,” Dhawan said, while speaking on the ‘New Ways of Marketing to Recharge Tourism’ by PATA India Chapter and BBC.  Talking about the company’s strategy, he revealed, “We very soon found out that we need to be agile, adapt and go inwards the domestic market. It was the only market at that time, as borders were shut and there were many restrictions. India will take a long time to recover the images of wave two and we really need to work together as an industry with all travel partners to get those images out of the minds of international traveller.”

However, Dhawan said that weddings have been the main source of business for a lot of our hotels during this period. “Just to share an example, in the state of Rajasthan, we operate the Fairmont Jaipur, which will do about 100 weddings this year alone, despite the setbacks in January and February,” he added.