HOSPITALITY CAPTAINS SPEAK
* We are on the verge of being sold out from December 24 to January 01. This is a great response considering that we have a huge 197-room inventory
- Nikheel Shirodkar, ibis Styles GM
* We are totally occupied on Dec 31. We are packed on Dec 25 and Dec 26 too. In fact, we are more than 95% occupied throughout next week
- Shivam Verma, Royal Orchid GM
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This New Year’s Eve might have thrown unexpected challenges to some due to demonetisation, but that’s clearly not the case with branded hotel-chains, which are already packed or almost 100% occupied for December 31.
Sources attribute this to the fact that such branded hotels were doing most of their business through debit or credit cards even before demonetisation came into effect and therefore they didn’t have to face any impact of currency-crunch in the market.
Nikheel Shirodkar, general manager, ibis Styles in Calangute, said, “We are on the verge of being sold out from December 24 to January 01. This is a great response considering that we have a huge 197-room inventory. In the next week, approaching New Year’s Eve, 86% of our guests are going to be domestic tourists.”
The domestic tourists arriving at large numbers at ibis Styles clearly are having no trouble vacationing even though cash is hard to find in India because they use debit/credit cards for their financial transactions.
Shirodkar continued, “90% people at our property are paying by card. Even before demonetisation was announced, 80% people used to pay by card.”
ibis Styles belongs to InterGlobe Hotels, which is a joint venture between AccorHotels Asia Pacific and InterGlobe Enterprises. AccorHotels is a huge chain of hotels worldwide and also has two five-star properties in Goa under the brand name of Novotel.
It becomes a lot easier for you to do marketing once you are a part of a big chain of hotels. Such chains have properties in metros like Delhi and Mumbai. Once a guest visits those properties, he gets to know about the same brand’s property in Goa as well, which has helped such brands in doing really well on Dec 31.
Shivam Verma, general manager, Royal Orchid Beach Resort & Spa at Utorda, said, “We are totally occupied on Dec 31. We are packed on Dec 25 and Dec 26 too. In fact, we are more than 95% occupied throughout next week. Almost 85% of our guests are domestic.”
Verma’s experience almost mirrors what Shirodkar said and that’s because Royal Orchid too is a chain of hotels and they also get referrals from other properties.
Moreover, such chains have professional marketing teams in not only metros but also smaller towns of India, which help them in spreading word about properties.
