TravTalk India Online Magazine
While the COVID-19 crisis is synonymous with gloom for businesses across the world including travel and tourism, there are some stories in the industry of adapting to the situation and making hay while the sun still shines. Here are three inspiring stories of surviving a pandemic…
Nisha Verma
The second session of 5th TRAVTALK Digital Conclave had people from the travel industry sharing their experience and insights on how they managed to turn an adversity into an opportunity and earning revenue while doing so. This is their story of surviving a pandemic…
Continuous innovation
Steve Borgia, CMD (Creator, Mentor, Developer), INDeco Leisure Hotels, says that while the pandemic took a toll mentally on his team, the fear around it made them think right. “First we thought that we should go back to the basics, things should be owner-driven. Earlier, I used to visit the hotel once in six months, but now I visit every week. We had to lead from the front. While on one side we knew we could do many things to stay afloat, with the government introducing new laws and regulations, we didn’t want to be caught unaware. Hence, we did what was permissible. One thing the government did was to give permission for people to travel for weddings. They allowed 50 pax per wedding and we thought of taking advantage of this. We used social media platforms to quickly reach our audience and introduce new packages,” he shared.
Interesting packages did the trick for them. “We launched the 50 pax wedding packages and allowed the use of our garden for the same, while we gave three pre and post photoshoots for free. Doing the first wedding was a great achievement, and we even advertised the same through social media, which resulted in many more weddings coming to the hotel. In March, we were busy closing the hotels and were not aiming at anything. In April, we planned to survive and earn money to pay the salary of the staff. However, the number of bookings for June were great and we made profit, which was a happy shock for us. We knew people could not travel from far to visit the hotel, and hence we focused on our neighbourhood and launched a programme called ‘Love Thy Neighbour’, wherein we invited the local people to experience our hotels and we brought down our price from `10,000 per night to `2500 because in the first two months, the aim was only to pay the salaries. There was another very popular programme – As You like It – which entitled the regional guest to drive in and stay with us, experience the property, and pay whatever they wanted. We covered the food cost, and for the room, it was up to them to pay. However, not even one guest paid less than `2500. There were at least 13-14 per cent guests who paid the published tariff. However, there the service had to be excellent and it exceeded expectations. When they paid 100 per cent published tariff, the employee got a 50 per cent cut in it. It was constant innovation. We even said that those coming by bicycle will get a 50 per cent discount, wherein we aimed at young people to start,” Borgia shared.
Still, a lot more had to be done. “We had to survive not just by earning revenue but also by cutting down cost. Where I needed 100 employees or even more to do a wedding long back, we had cut our employee numbers to only 10 who delivered. This meant constant skilling, cutting down costs, and exceeding expectations. After a lot of problems, continuous innovation and continuous cost cuts, we are now comfortable,” he added.
Stay connected with clients
For Mahendra Vakharia, Managing Director, Pathfinder Holidays, March was a busy month with bookings for the summer season coming in abundance, but it all changed within a day when the lockdown was announced. However, a positive outlook took him and his team through the pandemic. “We believe that every challenge has a cycle to it. In case of the pandemic, we had come to the lowest end of the cycle, which meant that the only way to move next was to go up. In the past few months, it dawned on us that no bookings were going to happen and the business that had happened had to be cancelled. However, that involved a process of communication and some back-and-forth with international partners, clients and airlines. While offices were closed in the last four months, we have been as busy, or rather busier, than before the pandemic. We have opened the offices and are working from home and part-time from office,” he said.
For him, helping clients with booking cancellations was the first step towards generating business. “We started helping all the clients who had booked with us in their cancellations, and getting the refunds from our international partners. Some of our clients were stranded out of India in March, and we were continuously speaking to them to make sure that they were comfortable in foreign destinations. As the situation improved and flights were permitted, we got them home safely. Apart from that, we managed to get all refunds for our customers from our international partners, which made the customers very happy,” he added.
Another interesting development were the Vande Bharat Mission (VBM) flights of Air India, said Vakharia. “It made us realise that there was a huge opportunity to do business in this segment. A lot of passengers were stuck in Gujarat and we have huge VFR traffic to UK, US and Canada, so we started helping clients with bookings on VBM flights. This helped in generating revenue for 2020 and we also started making some money. The important thing was not to earn any money in terms of profit, but to make sure that the team that we had in full was sustained and we didn’t have to worry about paying their salaries,” he stressed.
He also agreed that social media played a huge role in spreading the word. “In the last four months, we have gone on social media and it has been the most important factor. We used this opportunity and created some very nice programmes for driveable destinations from Ahmedabad, which included Udaipur, Kumbhalgarh and Bera. Apart from that there were many luxury properties for which we did social media campaigns and reached out to our clients. We continuously kept in touch with them, kept feeding them information about the developments in travel, while giving them details about different properties that we have worked upon. All these properties supported us with very good rates. This generated business. In fact, there are bookings for these luxury properties for August,” he claimed.
Validation point for clients
Mehernosh Colombowalla, Director, Beyond Borders Travel Management Company, said that the most important thing was to regain consumer confidence, which became a key for them to open the door to new business opportunities. “As professionals in the tourism space, we understand that regaining consumer confidence in travel is the key to regenerating the industry. Clients often do not have direct access to airlines, hospitality and tourism sectors. Thus, shortly after the lockdown began, we invested our time in connecting with our clients who have been with us over the years. In the past few months, we kept our clients updated with the positive developments and information given to us by the airlines, hotels and tourism boards. We spoke about less-frequented destinations and sent them short videos on interesting and unique experiences around the globe and kept their travel interest alive. We also sent them information of the various safety measures developed by airlines and hotels, and the new norms of travel sent to us directly by various service providers and tourism boards. This built ‘trust’ in our clients towards us, and very soon we became their validation point for various un-verified messages that they received. Building confidence, credibility and trust are of utmost importance,” he pointed out.
This communication also resulted in getting them new business. Elaborating, Colombowalla said, “The constant communication with clients became a two-way conversation. As a result, we got connected to a few shipping companies looking for help in the time of lockdown and ended up doing charters for shipping crew changes. Can you imagine the amount of financial opportunity we had in this business? While researching for more opportunities during the lockdown, we realised that there were many parents of students and students who wanted to go to universities abroad. We tied up with a few consultancy firms and got these students enrolled.
This helped them in choosing the right universities and preparing for entrance. We also did online engagements for ladies’ groups and issued tickets for some repatriation flights. Apart from that, there is a big-ticket high-end luxury booking for the month of August to Africa. All this was possible because we stayed positive and channelised our energy into finding opportunities during the lockdown. Instead of waiting for anybody else to help us, we helped ourselves, and this way we succeeded.”
Domestic will be the big draw
The new normal would see changes and fabulous growth, claimed Borgia. “We need a lot of people. I am happy that all the people in inbound are moving towards the regional sector and doing domestic business, which has many possibilities. By October, we will start engaging everybody. People can’t be restricted to inbound. Those who say they are prepared for anything and are open to innovation, India is a fabulous, complete, one big idea. Those prepared to innovate, to change and to look at opportunities, India is the country to be in. I am very proud to be in India—one big idea with thousands of mini ideas. I believe the past is the future of India. The Indian economy was built by the entrepreneurs who started young and small, and built it mighty. I think it’s in the hands of entrepreneurs, and we’ve got to move,” he asserted.
Vakharia added that while domestic might not be their only focus, they will be focusing on it at present. “From now till October, I do not foresee much of international happening because we still await what protocols are coming with visa regulations, which airlines are opening regular commercial flights from India. Till then, we will be doing domestic and India is a beautiful vast country, with fantastic beautiful domestic tourism destinations. Those who budgeted for international travel might reduce it and go nearby. There are fabulous options available in our own vicinity, where people can still go for a holiday. A holiday doesn’t need to be a full international holiday, it can even be a holiday with family and friends, where you can have some good time and come back,” he claimed.
Price advantage is crucial
Going forward, according to Borgia, the hotelier must learn to be unique and interesting, and get a price advantage. He said, “This is not the time to go on a price war. Do what your guest wants you to do and make sure that you give them excellent service so that they don’t want to get out of the hotel. We need to cut all the luxury to make a price advantage and not make it very expensive. We are great in hospitality and we need to give the customers the confidence, so transform and innovate.”
Vakharia concluded saying, “We are offering a service that is not tangible, and not something you get in a hotel or airline. We kept our clients updated regularly in terms of regulations coming through different destinations, countries, hotels and even airlines, and will continue doing so. This is part of our profession.”
At the end, Colombowalla said, “Travel agents will need to become more ambitious in how they design experiences, as a new paradigm of luxury travel that is life-enriching and value based is emerging.”
Time for fair play
“Nobody wants to go by air or train and prefers the road. Hence, we are also making three caravans and we already have 16 bookings for them. That can be another norm. We need to see what is permissible and play accordingly. It’s time to play an honest and straight-jacket game. We started redefining things we were going to do. Another package picking up very fast is Baby’s Day Out, which was targeted at young mothers who were tired of being at home and wanted to come to the hotel and spend time for a week. For men, we have ‘Great Escape’, with 15 bachelors getting together and driving in with an e-pass.” – Steve Borgia
Future changes for agents
“We don’t have to reinvent the wheel completely and start afresh. We must do the same things we have been doing in the past. But, going forward, we will have to be more mindful of what protocols we need to mention. We need to do a lot of handholding for our clients not only at the time of booking, but throughout the journey till they return. I would advise the industry to not give up hope. Not all storms come to you to blow you away, some storms come to clear the path for you so that you can do better. You have to be fair as well. This is the time when we have to realise where you are overspending. Introspect, bring it back, and then be realistic and ensure it is manageable if not solvable.” – Mahendra Vakharia
SOPs for agents
“Once you build trust with your clients, it will be very easy for you to influence them and inspire them to travel sooner than expected. Keep their travel dreams alive, share all related policies of cancellation and re-booking that the airlines are giving us. It’s all about communicating with them. Virtual tourism will be there for some time, but won’t supersede the conventional way of travel because we are already getting a lot of enquiries for travelling in the coming months. People want to get out and experience the destination rather than go on virtual tours” – Mehernosh Colombowalla
Expectation from service providers
“I would like to see more relaxed policies in terms of cancellations and refunds. In case a client is overseas and gets infected by the virus, we would expect the hotel to refund the remaining part of the stay, and even airlines can be more accommodating when charging for re-booking or even refund on the return portion, whatever the fare type may be, in case the client has to come back on the first available flight. Hence, collectively, we just need to work together to build trust and make sure that the client does not feel that he’s going to have huge losses if he contracts the virus when he is on a vacation overseas.” – Mehernosh Colombowalla
Taking ownership
“Whoever has booked the group will have to take the ownership. This doesn’t mean that the hotelier can be relieved, as he has to play a big role in handling the guest. Indian hotels work closely with the travel agents and won’t leave the guest alone.” – Steve Borgia
Top countries to travel to
“Indians would go to nearby destinations like Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Bali, Mauritius, and even Nepal and Bhutan. In Europe, UK will be on the top of the list as many Indians have family ties there. Switzerland is also very popular. But, we must wait and see what kind of protocols Switzerland and other countries put up for visa regulations, which could be a determining factor. Countries that will be more accepting towards Indians coming to them while granting visa, with fewer documents, would be more favourable than others. Switzerland, Spain, UK, and even Eastern Europe will be popular.” – Mahendra Vakharia
