Redefining The Oberoi Mumbai
In the last few years, Devendra Bharma, EVP, The Oberoi Group, has successfully steered The Oberoi, Mumbai, through one of its most difficult periods in its history. Negotiating an economic slowdown and the loss of its prime south Mumbai catchment, the hotel has defied all the odds to emerge as the country’s best city hotel. “It’s all right having a tag as a business hotel, but I think we’ve got to be a holistic hotel,” says Bharma. He may well have unwittingly coined a new category for the hospitality sector. Indeed, to win an award such as the “Leading city hotel in India” as The Oberoi, Mumbai, did about two years ago, at the World Travel Awards, it must take an extra special focus. The hotel continues to play host to a diverse set of guests, including Prime Ministers, Presidents and heads of state the world over, celebrities, corporate leaders and artists all travelling through one of Mumbai’s poshest districts. Read On ..
“You have to customize, constantly do research on who’s coming to stay and then create an environment for them,” says Bharma, underlining his point.
And nowhere is this zeal best reflected than when he adds that “as a team, we are always pushing ourselves to the limit and saying what we’ve done was good for yesterday. Now, let’s move on. Let’s not just sit on our laurels. We are always self-critiquing ourselves, always auditing ourselves, always making sure that we think out-of-the-box. All this comes from creating a culture.”
Situated in Mumbai’s financial district, close to the state’s seat of government, also conveniently close to Mumbai’s bustling night life and overlooking the Arabian sea, The Oberoi, Mumbai plays host to both business and leisure guests. “We’ve got to be an oasis in a busy city like Mumbai,” says Bharma. “In such a metropolis, you need to create an environment perfect for both leisure and a business traveler. Both have very different requirements and this comes from understanding your guests extremely well,” he adds.
For instance, the concierge and butler services are instrumental in catering to the needs of leisure guests, and “leisure guests see value in staying with us in spite of our primary positioning as a business hotel,” says Bharma. The hotel also excels in quick turn-around times for their business customers. “If they have meetings, we coordinate that perfectly. An instruction given once doesn’t need to be repeated,” he adds.
Even as the hotel aligns its services accordingly for its guests, of late, the skew is increasingly tilting more towards the leisure segment. It’s a story that’s playing out across south Mumbai. For the best part of the last decade, it has been somewhat of a double whammy for hotels in this area due to a faltering economy, worsened business conditions, lesser disposable income and a cutback in business travels and entertainment budgets. While this slump played out in a microcosm in south Mumbai, there was another trend as well at play here, one that has proven far more difficult.
Bharma sums it up clearly when he says, “South Mumbai, from being a business hub or the Wall Street of Mumbai, can no longer stay with that kind of a tag.”
The conundrum that presented itself started some years ago when businesses located in this hub of India’s financial capital began shifting their offices to other parts of the city largely due to a lack of space for expansion as other hubs developed, presenting easier alternatives for daily commuting as well as better, larger and more modern infrastructure facilities.
Responding to this structural shift. The Oberoi Group timed the opening of the new Trident at the Bandra Kurla Complex in central Mumbai to coincide with the shift of Mumbai’s corporate offices to the new district. “We were well in time to receive these newcomers in BKC and engage with them,” says Bharma.
Already a bustling business hotel, the construction of newly conceived modern residential blocks in BKC has seen occupants moving into the new apartments and has begun providing a fillip to business, especially food & beverage (F&B) to the Trident there. “Earlier, the F&B part is a little lower because in the evenings people didn’t really venture that side, but they have started to do soon now that many top executives have moved in to BKC. There are restaurants mushrooming around; we offer a very good fare in our hotel; there are malls close by in a 15 -minute drive. So, I think BKC has redefined itself as a very prominent area,” says Bharma.
For south Mumbai, though, Bharma is clear the road ahead lies in re-marketing or reinventing the area. And this has been part of the answer. In fact, over the last few years. The Oberoi, Mumbai, has been able to raise room rates between 15-22% while the Trident has raised rates by just over 10%.
And while it may not be business as usual just yet (at least compared with the boom times pre-2006), there is much to be upbeat about.
With the focus on infrastructure and tourism with announcements such as visa-on-arrival, the business environment may yet improve in the not-too-distant future.
Meanwhile, says Bharma, “In these conditions, the team has obviously look at new business verticals, newer market segments. These would be, namely, concentration in leisure, because we’ve seen that even in difficult times, the leisure market continues to work at a decent pace. The holiday-makers – it has reduced though – but I think there is opportunity there. The conferences and the MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions) business, though slower than other times, is still a big opportunity area for everybody.”
While Bharma points to the large banqueting spaces at the adjoining Trident and its ability to host large international conferences, he adds that “a customer, after five in the evening, also needs something to do and that’s where south Mumbai has an edge over the other areas of the city.” The second area of focus – leisure guests – are currently about 35% of the hotel’s business and growing at about 2-3% every year.
However, says Bharma. “My sense is that one has to just wait it out and see the various reforms that are coming, study the market very carefully and then analyse where the new business trend is going to really come from.”
At the moment, though, in a fiercely competitive environment characterized by still slowly improving business conditions, Bharma is well aware of the needs to be able to recognise new potential “which can’t be off-hand defined at this stage,” he says, “but as soon as you cite it, you go after it and make sure you get it by just having a certain amount of aggression and speed. That’ll show who is quicker in this market.”
So, how has a limp environment responded to the rate increases thus far?
“I personally believe,” says Bharma, “a customer comes back to you because of the treatment het gets, the service he gets, the product that you have, the ease and the efficiency of staying in a particular hotel and the comfort he goes away with. And people are willing to pay for it. Today, people travel the world over and they understand the good from the bad, the good from the ordinary and that’s what our team constantly works on.”
“It's not about cutting or raising rates, but the right rate for who you are. I think that’s really important and you should have the confidence to hold it,” he adds. Indeed, with distinctive services such as the spa that is among the few in the city that is open 24 hours a day, Bharma says, “this is what luxury is all about. You give the person space, time, let it flow in a way he wants to control it rather than control his life just because you have to close something.”
Undeniably so, and as The Oberoi, Mumbai charts a new path, for all its focus on new market segments and aggressively pursuing opportunities, the emphasis remains on the basics, on “good hoteliering.” “As our chairman says,” Bharma reveals, “you can make the best of hotels. Hardware can be fantastic, technology can be fantastic, you can have all sorts of gizmos in a room, but if you don’t service a customer well, all this is actually quite futile. You finally need care; you finally need pleasantries and warmth and recognition that makes you feel invited.”
- TradeBriefs Bureau -
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