‘A lot more can be done with less’

Anuraag Bhatnagar, COO, Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, believes that the Indian hospitality industry is not going to be the same post the ongoing disruption. He discusses how hotels can provide experience with ‘minimal’ touch, in a recently-conducted webinar.

Q How will the overall experience change in Indian hotels?

In an environment which is now averse to physical contact, social distancing has become the new ‘buzz’ word. From high-touch and high-tech, we probably now will be low-touch but high-tech, or no-touch but high-tech. We are working on how a guest experience remains low-touch, exclusive and yet meaningful. These unprecedented times have also made us realise a lot can be done with less and how fragile our business models are. On the other hand, it has opened avenues in the terms of e-learnings, technology, upscaling our resources and thinking the way F&B has been operating all these years. For example, do we really need a menu card in hotels? You don’t know who has touched that card before you.

We are very lucky to be working in a country like India where we have an extremely robust domestic economy. People in India fundamentally like to travel, experience new destinations and go to new resorts. They probably would want to ‘unlock’ themselves after this lockdown. They will explore the destination when they will travel by road. We see opportunity in domestic travel. The other thing that will pick up is the wedding business. We already see queries coming to our hotels and of course, instead of having the ‘big fat Indian wedding’, we will have mid-sized, semi-slim Indian weddings. Most of this trend is in Q4. So, I really think these two sectors will sustain us.

Q What are your estimates about the recovery period?

I don’t think we will have a V-shape recovery. In the best-case scenario, we will have a U-shape recovery, we will see some business coming in July and August. We see a sense of normalcy coming in Q4 (October-December).

Q Which segment of hotels will bounce back the fastest?

Both luxury and budget hotels would recover at the same pace. We are counting on affluent luxury travellers who may not travel to Bali, New York or somewhere exotic right now, but would come to one of our resorts. I don’t think luxury hotels will miss this path to recovery. Resorts within a 4-5-hour drive from key cities would benefit a lot.

Q What are some of immediate changes that hotels will see?

We are working on what a new normal experience should be like. We are rebooting our experiences, starting from the airport arrival experience. We would need declaration of travel history from our guests. I believe, in general we have to make sure that what we are doing in terms of safety and hygiene has to be tangible. Hypothetically, there could be a tunnel, where walking through it will sanitise the guest and his clothes. This can become normal in the future.

The seating in the restaurant is going to be reprogrammed, the capacity of the ballroom has to be relooked at. How the banquet buffets are laid out needs to be re-structured. So, we are working on all these aspects. Our laundry, housekeeping services, will be revisited. Also, how we place our rooms is going to get changed. I am sure every guest would want to know who stayed in that room before them. If possible, we will rotate rooms in a strategic way, to make commercial sense as well.