?Indians are quite demanding as travellers,? says Philip Logan, vice-president of Accor?s budget hotel chain Formule 1. And that?s precisely why, to keep up with the demands of Indian travellers, international budget hotel brands making a beeline for India are willing to change their product and service offerings to suit local expectations.
Statistics drive this trend. One, the number of Indian travellers is swelling. Another, unlike other global hotel markets, majority of guests checking into economy hotels in India are domestic and not international. In 2011, there were 851 million domestic tourist visits as compared to only 19.5 million foreign tourist visits.
Usually facilities at a typical international budget hotel are at best of the basic level?minimal food and beverage offering, no fancy specialty restaurants, vending machines instead of well-stocked minibars, minimal room service and lots of DIY options like laundry and ironing. However, in India there are some additional features. Sample this: India will be the only market where Holiday Inn Express, the no-frills brand of hospitality major Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG), will have a multi-cuisine restaurant even though it will be operated by a third party to save costs. ?Indians are very particular about what they eat. Also, we will offer regional cuisine in breakfast. That is also because unlike western countries and some south-east Asian markets, restaurants are not available at a walking distance in India,? explains Jan Smits, IHG?s chief executive for Asia, Middle East and Africa.
Holiday Inn Express, which has over 2,100 hotels, recently opened its first south Asia property in Bangkok. Holiday Inn Express will debut in India with the Ahmedabad property scheduled to open by September this year. It has a joint venture with Duet India Hotels Group to develop 19 hotels by 2016.
When British budget hospitality chain, Premier Inn, which has 48,000 identical hotel rooms across the UK, decided to launch in India, market research was carried out among various categories of travellers. When a mobile cabin room, exactly similar to its hotel room in the UK, was designed here, the company had to make many changes for Indian market based on the feedback. Therefore, its two operational properties in India have a closed wardrobe as opposed to open ones in the UK, a full-length mirror was added keeping in mind that Indian women might want to drape a saree in the hotel room and a writing desk was also thrown in. Not only this, Premier Inn in India also offers room service and banqueting space. ?We learnt quite a bit from our market research and made changes that would suit Indian travellers,? says Shwetank Singh, vice-president, operations, Premier Inn. The hotel group, part of Whitbread that also owns coffee major Costa Coffee, has three hotels under construction in India and has a target to strike seven to eight deals annually.
Accor?s budget brand, Formule 1?s India debut story also has some similar quirks. ?Abroad, our hotels don?t have dustbins. The idea is simple; don?t give them dustbins and they won?t create rubbish. But in India we have given them dustbins in the bathroom. We even got feedback from a guest on why was there no lock for the bathroom door,? says Logan. There are other add-ons too. Formule 1 hotels in India have a 24-hour security, maintenance staff and a food and beverage outlet that a third party vendor operates. Though costs have been kept under control, keeping in mind the math of a budget hotel, the employee per room ratio in India is double of what it maintains globally.
Experience has shown that Indian hospitality budget chains cannot function when they ape norms followed in the West. For instance, mid-market hospitality chain Lemon Tree had to tweak its brand positioning. Later it launched a separate no-frills brand Red Fox, and upgraded Lemon Tree to a mid-market brand. Tata?s budget chain, too, has added conference room for MICE (meetings, incentives, conferences, and exhibitions) travellers in its latest property at Faridabad. Taking a cue from these experiences, international brands, though some of them have just woken up, have modified their offerings to fit into the Indian scene. ?The Indian market and domestic travellers are quite new to the concept of branded budget or low-cost hotels. So hoteliers have to learn from research and trial and error method,? says a hotel analyst.
