Photo Credits: Biz Plus: Zest
quote if needed:
We provide incredible experiences, unique accommodations, and tailor-made delights. Regardless of your destination, Zest represents high class professional travel experience for the discerning traveller. Allow us to coordinate your holiday with some of the world’s most respected cruises, tour and hotel providers – so you can enjoy your most valuable commodity – your leisure time.”
Gautam Bhende,
Associate Partner, Zest Tours & Travels
.........
Photo Credit: Shubhankar Shah
.........
Photo Caption: Gautam Bhende, associate partner, Zest Tours & Travels, Goa
........................
sidebar: Zest assures prompt services defined by excellent quality and performance.Though a fledgling company, it has a far-reaching vision – to ensure personalised service, hassle-free travel coupled with innovative and unique packages at highly competitive rates.
....................
Heading: Zest Tours & Travels: Clients' satisfaction at all costs!
...................................
Intro: With so many respected cruises, tour and hotel providers all vying for the travel pie, how does one tour and travel provide rise head and shoulders above the rest. Zest Tours and Travels has done just that and BHARATI PAWASKAR spends time with the associate partner Gautam Bhende to know the secrets of the success.....
....................................
When we believe life itself is a journey, can travel be a product to be sold or purchased? Is it something that can be touched or even felt? Nevertheless it’s an enriching experience all together that creates lasting impressions in the life of the traveller. Zest leads one to enjoy this once in a lifetime experience. “Believing in this principle that takes one on a voyage just to explore and experience the world beyond one’s own imagination, Zest Tours & Travels have been striving to offer just that, for the past 15 years in Mumbai and in Goa for the past seven years,” shares the associate partner Gautam Bhende.
Zest Tours & Travels, a leading provider of travel and tour services, having its head office at Mumbai has opened its branch office in Goa to cater to the huge flow of tourists that travel to and from this small State which is the favourite destination on the global map and a second home to many foreign nationals. “We provide incredible experiences, unique accommodations, and tailor-made delights. Regardless of your destination, Zest represents high class professional travel experience for the discerning traveller. Allow us to coordinate your holiday with some of the world’s most respected cruises, tour and hotel providers – so you can enjoy your most valuable commodity – your leisure time,” states Gautam who heads the Goan counterpart of Zest.
A professional quality service provider in the field of hospitality management, offering a comprehensive range of services in the fields of ticketing, visas, overseas insurance, inbound and outbound tours, hotel reservations and incentive tourism, Zest assures prompt services defined by excellent quality and performance, he claims. “We may be a fledgling company, but we have a far-reaching vision – to ensure personalised service, hassle-free travel coupled with innovative and unique packages at highly competitive rates,” adds Gautam.
At Zest, a team of 60 dedicated professionals draws upon their vast experience, constantly updating product knowledge, determined to make their client’s travel dreams come true. The team works on unique and unexplored trends which have ensured that their clients remain friends forever. “It’s all customised, depending upon the budget and plans of our clients. We stretch our way to ensure that each small detail is planned well in advance. For example, we had a client on a honeymoon tour abroad and his birthday happened to be during the trip, his friends in Goa wanted to send him a cake wherever he was, on that day. We saw to it that he received his surprise.” quips Gautam.
Zest provides city break packages too, in India and abroad. One can choose five star luxury or budget-busting value or somewhere in-between, Zest has a great selection to suit each client. There is flexibility of booking as many nights – starting with just one. One can also choose either to book a package holiday with Zest, or pick only what they want like a hotel reservation, sightseeing, transfer, ticket or visa.
Elaborating on their array of services specifically designed for corporate travel needs like handling Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Events (MICE) etc, Gautam assures of the competitive fares. “Our holiday department is well equipped to design all sorts of travel itineraries, including accommodation, sightseeing ticketing, transfers along with visa and insurance requirements,” he boasts.
Zest can arrange luxurious cruise rides too with nothing but the expanse of the high seas around at Caribbean, Alaska, Mexico (Pacific Coast), Hawaii, Mediterranean, Northern Europe, Bermuda, Panama Canal, Transatlantic, New England and Canada, South Pacific/Tahiti, Australia and NZ, Asia and the Pacific Coast.
Gautam who loves travelling landed up in Zest after having tried out his hand at many businesses. A half-way production engineer from Fr Agnel Polytechnic, Verna, he is well-experienced in various fields and was handling the associate office of Synergy Business Management Solutions in Goa until a year ago. Working as sales manager with ING Vysya Bank prior to plunging into the field of running his own business, Gautam thought of taking the risk and starting something of his own with the moral support of his wife Shweta, a bank employee and like-minded friends – Siddhesh Shetye and Amey Desai.
“Let’s start more than one thing at a time so that if one does not work, the other may click,” the trio decided and thus got associated with Zest as well as Synergy Business Management Solutions (SBMS).
“At Synergy, we were largely into consultancy as our services included System Certification, Product Certification, Human Resources Management, Training, Business Transformation Tool and Organisation Culture as well as Performance Assessment,” briefs Gautam. Manned by professional competent consultants in their respective areas, Synergy also entered in strategic alliance with some top professionals with technical expertise in different areas and built up a wide base of associates comprising a powerful source of intellectual resources that can be seamlessly utilised for execution of assignment to any degree of complexity.
Gautam’s banking background in sales, and his AMFI certification permitted him to get into selling mutual funds as well. With eight years’ experience in hand, Gautam started off as a businessman eight years ago with Rs 25,000 as the initial capital investment and a lot of well-developed contacts.
“I gave business of approximately Rs 60 lakh to Zest in the first year itself. Our first office was at business centre with a small table space on 18th June Road in Panaji but I got amazing clients who supported me and invested trust in my abilities. I owe my success to my clients, especially the ones like Vallabh Prabhu who was our first client to book his family trip abroad. He not only did that but also gave me a green signal to go ahead after studying the possibilities of success with Zest,” recalls Gautam who is in touch with all his clients on a one-to-one basis even now. Clients like Prabhu and many corporates have been encouraging him to do better every day.
“Over the years my friends parted ways in business keeping the friendship intact. I am concentrating only on Zest now as there is tremendous scope to explore the probabilities in tours and travel business and allied products,” spells this young enthusiast who paved his own way through his engineering and banking background to become a successful travel agent. The Zest Mumbai and Goa put together are also on the B2B platform providing services to over 70 travel agents with travel related products. Gautam always likes to apply most of the things that he studied and maybe that’s the secret why he is where he is today – as his well-wishers put it.
