Reaching out for business

Fortune Hotels has gone through a face change from a business brand to a leisure and even wedding & M!CE brand today, while expanding its portfolio in pilgrimage destinations as well.

Nisha Verma

The hospitality business, says Dhananjay Saliankar, Head of Sales & Marketing – India for Fortune Hotels & Welcomheritage, has not changed much after COVID. “We are coming back to normalcy, but the way we approach towards business in different segments has changed a little bit, simply because of our dependency on corporate travel, leisure travel and M!CE travel, which were some the basic fundamental segments that used to feed businesses in the past,” he said.

“Pandemic has taught us to look at things differently. Since then, one has started exploring all other opportunities available in the marketplace like weddings and social events. Every hotelier and event manager were running behind that business. It continues to be a good opportunity. Segments like movies, Bollywood, OTTs, sports, are new avenues, which we didn’t focus on much before, and used to do only if something came our way. Now, it’s becoming one of our core businesses. We are still waiting for inbound to happen, while domestic has shaped very well and outbound has also taken off. It’s a long wait for inbound, which should start by 2023 second half,” he added.

Samir MC, MD – Fortune Hotels, ITC, shared, “We have opened some interesting hotels at some exciting locations. We’ve launched a hotel in Katra and opened another hotel in Kufri. As we go into this year, the most interesting thing to see is that travel has rebounded and it’s great to see everybody travelling again.”

Focus segment

Saliankar revealed that earlier, Fortune Hotels, as a company used to be a business brand. “However, now our footprint is going to leisure locations more including secondary cities as well as tertiary cities, where we are looking at new business coming in. We have started concentrating on pilgrimage sector as well and we have properties in Tirupati, Haridwar, Katra, Amritsar, etc.,” he added.