Feature
Hotel Business Review
options like ice hotels or underwater lodge, which have been realties in the west? Furthermore, more and more hotels located close to deserts, sea and mountains should also be more proactive in organising creative adventure tourism activities in and around their precincts (like scuba diving, desert safari, jungle safari, etc.) which can encourage much more tourism and hospitality revenues than we are getting now.
For the Ladies Improvement of our overall tourism infrastructure and ensuring perfect safety for female tourists are very much needed towards making India a world class tourist destination, which can in turn attract greater tourism and hospitality revenues. Not only hotels and resorts (here I do not mean only five-star hotels and resorts) should reserve a floor for single lady travellers or groups of lady travellers in increasing numbers, they should also embrace the policy of having lady butlers, lady chauffeurs, and lady martial artist experts for facilitating the security of their lady guests, in increasing numbers. The lady chauffeurs, lady butlers, lady martial artist experts and lady adventure tour experts (to guide women adventure tourists) can become the norm in the Indian hospitality industry, at least across the five-star and four-star properties, if our state tourism bodies extend financial support to those hotels and resorts who would have at least 60 percent of their personnel as women. The Departments of Tourism of various state governments can also make it mandatory that all forthcoming and existing hotels and resorts in their states should invest at least a certain percentage of their annual budget (which ideally should border around 10-15 percent) exclusively on its women guests’ security. If they are found deviating from this norm, their licenses could be cancelled by the Union Ministry of Tourism. For fruition of this idea into an effective law, the state departments of tourism and the Union Ministry of Tourism should work in perfect tandem, which though sounds difficult, is not impossible. These women-friendly hospitality policies should not only be confined to high-end five-star properties, but should be percolated to the three-star and two-star properties too, which in turn will lead to 42
Nov-Dec ’15
the presence of more single lady travellers of both inbound and domestic varieties, in the Indian hospitality industry. Of course, exhaustive security measures are not the only way to attract more numbers of inbound and domestic women travellers to and within India, though they are absolutely necessary. The women travellers travelling within India for business or leisure should also be made to feel comfortable and feel excited to explore this unique experience called India. For this, specially tailored tourism packages for single lady travellers who generally travel for business, or for groups of lady travellers who generally travel for leisure (both segments are increasing over the years, in India) and thoughtful entertainment options exclusively geared to interest them should be provided/ hosted by the hotels and resorts on a regular basis.
Harnessing the Potential Besides these endeavours, our hospitality properties need to develop their MICE
and banqueting facilities, infuse more innovativeness in their F&B options, and develop their wellness quotient. MICE and spa are both promising sectors of the Indian hospitality industry, as there is huge demand for these two segments among the huge numbers of business and leisure travellers in India. In this regard, rapid improvements in the conference and exhibition scenario are also needed to induce the domestic tourism yield its potential revenues through MICE. Similarly, unless we have many more numbers of trained spa personnel than we have now, the growing demand for wellness in the country would not be able to enhance the wellness tourism revenues in the country anywhere close to its potential demand. One can say in both MICE and wellness, India is facing with supply side bottlenecks. We have the potential demand in these areas, but have
paucity of infrastructure or HR to harness that potential The growing interest in spiritualism and Ayurveda in the west can also increase India’s viability as a tourist destination among the foreign tourists. However, the country’s revenues through religious tourism, eco-tourism, rural tourism, etc. would enhance appreciably in the near future, only if India can supplement its natural advantages in these areas with adequate infrastructural and HR support.
Salvation and Sanitation Moreover, it is common knowledge that India has numerous religious sites and shrines, which are enough to make a devotee of religious tourism to explore for at least a lifetime. From Varanasi to Jammu, from Ajmer to Tirupati, and from Goa to Puri to Rameswaram, the thread of religious tourism in India spreads across the length and breadth of the country. But it is lamentable that many of our important destinations of religious tourism, such as Varanasi, Puri, Hardwar are lacking in terms of sanitation. This may discourage many Indian and foreign tourists from exploring these destinations or extending their stay at these destinations. Many of our famous centres for religious tourism could generate greater number of foreign tourists, and consequently much better revenues, with better cleanliness of their environment. Addressing spiritual needs in an unhygienic atmosphere can often be quite a challenge for the soul.
Beyond the Metros Developing the tourism and hospitality infrastructure of tier-II and III cities of India is also the need of the hour. Many of them like Kolhapur, Nasik, Ludhiana and Panipat are industrial towns and are frequented by business travellers, and thus developing their tourism infrastructure can lead to the growth of more revenues to the hospitality industry from these tier-II and tier-III cities. The fact that the real estate prices are affordable in tier-II and tier-III cities of India as compared to the metros, should also be an incentive for hospitality players to foray in these markets, displaying huge potential. Thankfully, many hospitality players are exploring the high revenue opportunities from tier-II and tier-III cities of the country, but more needs to be done in this regard. n