“Domestic tourism to drive short- to mid-term recovery of travel & hospitality sector”

The travel and hospitality industry, which accounts for over 8 per cent of India’s total employment with over 4 crore jobs, is one of the most affected by the pandemic. On the occasion of World Tourism Day, Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), South Asia’s largest hospitality company, launched Travel For India – a campaign to inspire safe travel and help rebuild the tourism and hospitality industry that touches millions of lives. In line with the Government’s ‘Vocal for Local’ vision, Travel For India aims at driving awareness about the importance of domestic tourism and its impact on livelihoods. With a number of initiatives supporting indigenous tourism in the pipeline, this initiative was kick-started with a special video celebrating the incredible diversity of India whilst spreading a message of optimism, hope and unity in solidarity of its vast ecosystem.

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‘Travel for India’ supports responsible travel by showcasing the millions of people dedicated to making tourism a unique experience. The purpose of this campaign is to reiterate IHCL’s commitment to support the revival efforts of the sector whilst conveying the far-reaching social impact each traveller’s journey can make.

In an interesting conversation with Adgully, Rakhee Lalvani, Vice President – PR and Corporate Communications, and Nairita Ghosh, Corporate Communications Manager, IHCL, share their views on the campaign and provide an overall picture on how important it is to bring the travel and tourism industry back into action by following all safety protocols.

What’s your objective behind launching the #TravelForIndia campaign? What is the communication strategy here and how is it going to reassure and woo the travellers to step out of their homes and start staying in hotels?

Nairita Ghosh: The pandemic has impacted lives and economies across the globe. In India, too, the crisis brought travel and tourism to a virtual standstill since March 2020. For a sector that contributes 9.3 per cent to the overall Indian GDP and accounts for over 8 per cent of India’s total employment with over 60 million jobs, currently the Indian travel and hospitality industry is staring at a potential job loss of approximately 38 million, which is 70 per cent of the total workforce.

However, as one of the most resilient industries, we believe that we will not only survive this crisis, but emerge stronger than ever. In fact, we have been seeing green shoots of travel slowly beginning to emerge with the recent phase-wise unlocking of the country across states. And with international borders still closed, domestic tourism is slated to drive the short- to mid-term recovery of the sector.

Indian Hotels Company’s #TravelForIndia initiative was kickstarted on the occasion of World Tourism Day with the aim to inspire responsible travel and drive awareness about the importance of domestic tourism and its impact on livelihoods. In line with the Government’s ‘Vocal for Local’ vision, #TravelForIndia is designed to celebrate the incredible diversity of our country and help rebuild the tourism and hospitality industry that touches millions of lives.

It is our endeavour to come together and give the future of travel a new meaning with optimism, hope and unity in solidarity of the industry. So, we invite you to rediscover India with Taj while putting a smile on the many faces you meet along your journey.

Because when you travel, India moves.

What’s your media strategy to promote the #TravelForIndia launch video and how do you plan to engage with your audience on your various announcements and offerings? 

Nairita Ghosh: The #TravelForIndia initiative was kick-started with a special campaign video that showcases various facets of India and the millions of people dedicated to making tourism a unique experience, whilst conveying the far-reaching social impact each traveller’s journey can make. We harnessed the power of digital and adopted the Digital First strategy to launch the initiative. Moreover, keeping in mind the rising digital content consumption patterns observed in the past couple of months, the #TravelForIndia video was amplified via our social media and digital platforms.

In addition, we communicated with our key stakeholders, including the media, through direct engagement. The compelling narrative of the video has seen the video receive significant engagement and reach in over just a couple of days in addition to being shared by social media influencers and industry experts across the globe, organically.

The #TravelForIndia initiative marks the beginning of a concerted effort from IHCL to initiate a discourse around the role hospitality will play in the coming months in helping people rediscover all that India has to offer and reiterates IHCL’s commitment to support the revival efforts of the sector.

There are a number of IHCL initiatives in the pipeline that will support indigenous and safe tourism across the country. Be it sharing wellness tips from our Jiva experts, culinary secrets from our chefs or inspiring wanderlust amongst our global audiences while highlighting the diverse wonder that is our country, we will continue to leverage our digital and social media platforms, in addition to adopting direct marketing strategies basis data analytics and insights to engage with our consumers. As industry leaders, we are also creating opportunities and participating in various thought leadership opportunities across platforms to encourage dialog and idea sharing to further boost the revival of the industry.

Leisure and Business travel constitutes the major businesses for hotels. How do you plan to win the customers back and what kind of marketing and advertising campaigns are in the pipeline to engage with your core audience?

Rakhee Lalvani: With international borders still closed and the fatigue of being confined to their homes beginning to settle in, we have seen some early green shoots of, what is popularly called, revenge travel, especially post the phase-wise unlocking across the nation. As consumer sentiment improves with the unlocking of the economy, we have been recalibrating demand indicators to help understand how booking patterns are emerging. In fact, the #TravelForIndia initiative stemmed from the insight that domestic travel will be the key driver to the sector’s revival in the short- to mind-term.

Moreover, with safety being of key concern, an increasing number of travellers are looking to explore destinations in and around their homes and cities. While staycations have seen growing popularity, we have also seen a demand for driving holidays or drivecations, with travelers willing to drive a couple of hours or more to lesser discovered destinations, where they can maintain a comfortable level of social distancing.

For those looking to balance work and leisure, long haul getaways to serene locations that increase productivity while allowing one to reconnect with friends and family or simply relax are the new big trend as are wellness-focused retreats and digital detoxes, as people become increasingly aware about their overall wellbeing.

Some of IHCL’s latest innovative consumer-focused marketing initiatives such as 4D – Dream, Drive, Discover, Delight; Urban Getaways; Bizcations, Wellness Retreats, Digital Detox and more, which emanated from these insights, are showing success.

This can also be attributed to the fact that consumers are gravitating towards trusted brands more, with their overall safety and health in mind. With Taj recently being rated as India’s Strongest Brand by Brand Finance across all sectors, guest trust and brand loyalty for IHCL are further reiterated.

Be it our Taj – India’s Strongest Brand; Tajness – A Commitment Restrengthened, which highlights our enhanced safety measures across hotels; or even our many ongoing and upcoming marketing campaigns for consumer offerings – we will continue to adapt to digital and social media platforms to create awareness and amplify the same. Given our heritage, legacy unique and diverse portfolio, we will continue to use the power of storytelling in our marketing approach.

While encouraging people to travel, safety remains the biggest concern that a traveller has today, be it flying or staying in a hotel. How is Indian Hotels Company Limited planning to give a contactless stay and what safety protocols are being followed to make it a safe and a peaceful stay at your various hotel properties?

Rakhee Lalvani: What the pandemic has brought to the fore is the increased focus on safety and hygiene and the need for social distancing measures. While people are eager to escape the mundane-ness of daily life confined within four walls, there is an underlying fear about health and safety protocols associated with travel that is imperative to address and allay these fears. With the health and wellbeing of all our stakeholders being of utmost importance, we have implemented enhanced safety and hygiene measures across all our hotels under our Tajness – A Commitment Restrengthened program, which follows the highest precautionary standards of in accordance with the guidelines published by the World Health Organization (WHO), Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) and the Government of India.

From the moment the guest puts foot in a hotel car until alighting from one on their way back home, these carefully thought through measures include intensive hospital level sanitisation of hotels as well as social distancing measures, and reorganisation of restaurants and banquet areas with greater emphasis on wellness-oriented food sections for healthier meals and greater level of immunity.

Keeping in mind the need for minimal contact, we also launched I-ZEST – IHCL’s Zero-Touch Service Transformation – a suite of digital solutions across our hotels that further ensure social distancing for both, guests and associates, while offering the sincere care, warmth and guest-centric service that we are synonymous with. These digital enhancements span guest experiences, from pre-arrival to departure offering zero to minimal touch options through innovative facilities such as digital pre check-in registrations to contactless guest access to their rooms via optional digital key cards, while maintaining the highest levels of safety and security. Check-outs too are optimised with online invoicing services without the need to use card machines while digital menus installed across restaurants facilitate dining orders through QR codes.

The service levels at the hotels will have a new dimension. How do you plan to hone the skills and train your hotel teams and staff members to face challenges in the new normal?

Not only guests, the enhanced safety measures extend to our employees too, our main stakeholders. All guest facing employees have been adequately trained about social distancing norms as well as the latest precautionary hygiene and safety guidelines. Keeping their safety in mind, digital training sessions about the new safety processes have been conducted. All associates and vendors are provided with appropriate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and all work areas are disinfected regularly and mandatory thermal screening of all employees and vendors are undertaken.

Under I-ZEST, we have implemented contactless attendance systems that also measure body temperature, in addition to automated employee portals, which further enhance the overall wellbeing and safety of both, our guests and employees.

The government is planning to increase the travel capacity to 75% on domestic air travel. Will this boost domestic tourism and would you see consumers exploring more domestic destinations and how are you geared up to meet the expectations and needs of this new customer?

Rakhee Lalvani: Domestic travel will act as the key driver for the industry in the coming months. In fact, while domestic travel contributed to 87 per cent of the bulk of India’s leisure travel in 2018, domestic travellers will mark the beginning of a new era of travel. With reports showing that the share of domestic travel has increased significantly in 2020, it is showcasing slow but steady signs of growing with renewed vigour.

The increase in capacity for domestic air travel is a welcome move indeed and with the festive season around the corner, it is estimated that air travel will see an upward trend in the coming months. After months of no travel, travel trends have seen a seismic shift with people keen to explore destinations within the country itself.

As the custodians of Indian hospitality and the pioneers in putting many destinations like Rajasthan, Kerala, Goa, and more recently, the Andamans on the global tourist map, IHCL is well positioned to drive domestic tourism within India with an extensive footprint at every corner of the country, while delivering our legendary Tajness with a restrengthened commitment of enhanced safety and hygiene.

The pandemic has also disturbed the spending levels both at the personal and corporate levels. Pricing will be an important factor here, so do you plan to revisit your tariffs and introduce attractive pricing and packages to woo customers?

Rakhee Lalvani: These past couple of months, with armchair travel overtaking the delight of actual travel, people have begun to value the joy of travelling and exploring the world like never before. Even as people increasingly seek experiences that allow them to enjoy the nuances of travel and all that a destination has to offer in this new normal world, while being price cautious, travel will focus more on providing ‘value’ rather than discounting.

Over the years, the perceived value of international travel has often superseded that of domestic travel. The silver lining to this pandemic is that it has given us an opportunity to not only showcase the many unique and often, undiscovered treasures of India, that many travellers are yet to get familiar with; but is also an opportunity to magnify the tremendous value of travelling within a vast and diverse country like India.

This will only be achieved through value-led offerings such as experiential holidays, urban vacations, wellness-focused retreats and healthy and detox offerings among others.

Traveling is a fundamental need and people can’t stay without it for too long, and we at IHCL will continue our endeavor to create memorable moments and experiences for travelers.