TravTalk India Online Magazine
Sudeep Jain, Managing Director, South-West Asia, IHG Hotels & Resorts, talks about the brand’s growth plans and ensuring it attracts business while maintaining the talent pool within the organisation. He also talks about trends and innovations that can keep the hospitality sector afloat in these times.
Nisha Verma
What are IHG’s plans for the year?
As the situation stabilises in India, we are well-positioned to capitalise on the returning demand and remain committed towards our growth and expansion strategy. Earlier this year, we opened Holiday Inn Chandigarh Zirakpur and announced the debut of our world-renowned extended-stay brand, Staybridge Suites, in India with the signing of Staybridge Suites Bengaluru Thanisandra. Recently, we also signed Holiday Inn Express & Suites in Jalandhar to strengthen our footprint in Punjab and Holiday Inn Express Pokhra Lakeside in Nepal. We are optimistic about the year ahead and are in active discussions to meaningfully expand our presence across key markets in the country.
What made IHG sail through the pandemic?
We were quick to evolve our offerings to meet the demands of the market. We identified new revenue centres and forayed into the food delivery segment across our hotels, which has seen rapid growth since last year. We also partnered with preferred vendors to lease our outdoor venues for intimate weddings and social events to generate incremental revenues. These offerings, together with IHG’s Way of Clean programme that promises a clean and safe environment to guests, helped us instil consumer confidence. We continued to capitalise on domestic travel in both leisure and corporate sectors to drive business. Our effort towards protecting our hotel owners, managing stable revenues, rationalising operating costs, and flexibility to adapt whilst taking care of our colleagues helped us sail through the crisis.
What about maintaining the talent pool?
In the current scenario, the business environment has changed significantly and the concept of hospitality is being redefined. In order to serve our guests in the new context and make sure the talent is fully equipped to do so, we believe it is important that we train all members of our workforce extensively across all hotel operations to adapt to the new normal. Keeping this in mind, we have provision for extensive operational guidance on health, safety & cleanliness, and changes to hotel Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for all existing and new employees.
Efficient talent management will continue to remain an important consideration for the hospitality sector. Keeping this in mind, we are investing in tools for workforce optimisation and labour efficiency as we look to set up for success in 2021 and beyond. Additionally, training of workforce and investing in professional development will continue to remain important.
Our aim as a company is to come out of this crisis much stronger and it is important that we have the right talent, with the right resources and right training to help us achieve this.
