‘40 more hotels by the end of 2022’

Royal Orchid & Regenta Hotels, managing a portfolio of over 50+ properties across the country, was founded in 2001 by Chander K Baljee. 20 years on, with the head office based in the heart of Bengaluru, the hotel group plans to reach 100 hotels by 2022.

Reminiscing about his journey, Baljee said, “The journey over the past 20 years has been an exhilarating one. When we started our journey in 2000, I immediately started working on paving the road ahead for growth. My goal was to build and nurture a domestic brand that is preferred by most in the country. Through the years, in pursuit of this goal, we invested in acquiring the right talent and aligned them to work towards a common goal.”

Management Development Program

He further added, “We implemented cutting edge technology that helped drive efficiency and offer best-in-class service to guests. The emphasis put on staff training through MDP (Management Development Program) and multi-skilling equipped our teams and individuals to take on all challenges. Over the years, we also adopted the asset-light strategy, and as a result, we added many management contracts to our portfolio. Owing to all of these steps taken, we were able to pivot the group in the right direction, and as a result, we grew exponentially.”

2020 has been a challenging year for the hospitality industry with Covid-19 turning the way the industry operates, upside down. New trends or demands have cropped up, with domestic travellers dominating the market since international passenger flights have been banned till February 28, 2021 till further notice. 

In light of this, when asked about the plans on attracting domestic tourists and marketing strategies adopted for hotels in the leisure destinations, Baljee commented, “As a result of the pandemic, we’ve noticed a shift in guest behaviour under various customer sub-segments. For instance, potential guests in cities like Bangalore, which is predominantly home to IT employees, are looking for hotels/resorts close to Bangalore where they can work remotely and take a break at the same time. We’ve noticed similar behavioural patterns emerging across other metros and large cities as well. These trends have pushed us to change the way we communicate with our guests. We’ve now pivoted our marketing strategies to adapt to this change.”

Domestic Tourism

He continued, “Our communication now has become even more hyper-local and hyper-targeted to a predefined target group of potential guests. We have been promoting drivable destinations within a radius of 300 – 400 km from a particular city, and also promoting tailor-made heritage, wildlife, hill station, beach holidays, staycation, daycation and driving destination packages and campaigns. International travel restrictions to have forced a lot of guests to opt for holiday destination within the country. Targeting this sub-set of potential guests through our communication has also contributed to increased occupancy, repeat visits and referred guests coming to our hotels and resorts.”

Talking about their expansion plans i.e. 100 hotels by 2022, Baljee said that as of January 2021, they had 60 hotels operating out of 39 cities and aimed to add 40 more hotels to their portfolio by the end of 2022. “We are well on our way to achieve this goal. We’re now investing in wildlife, spiritual and leisure destinations while continuing expansion in Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities. Our expansion strategy is rooted in the fact that people today wish to travel further, more often and to off-beat locations. Considering the present-day guest needs, we’ve also started revamping our offerings through curated and personalised experiences for our more discerning guests,” he said. 

Then how does Royal Orchid sets itself apart from its competitors? Baljee said, “Today, more than ever before, the industry and the market is in a state of flux and constantly evolving. Our inherent business model, which is to remain asset light has helped us to develop a balanced portfolio of hotels and quickly adapt to the ever-changing competitive landscape. Apart from a healthy mix of business, leisure and bi-leisure hotels that makes up our group, we’ve always endeavoured to stay ahead of the curve with respect to industry trends, technology, building an agile work force, and also making sure that we are consistently creating, reviewing and improving the experience we provide to our guests.”

Experiential Travel

Experiential travel is slowly becoming the next big thing. Speaking on this growing segment especially in relation to Wildlife Tourism, Baljee said, “Demand for experiential travel is on the rise, and in the case of wildlife tourism, it is no different. A recent global survey showed that Gen X and millennials accounted for 68 per cent of the leisure travel market in 2019. This goes to show that the travel preferences of millennials will shape the future of the leisure travel industry in the years to come. We’ve also seen that millennials are immersive travellers. They want to explore the spirit of the place, try the local cuisine, study the culture, history and live that moment completely. These are the tell-tale signs that a paradigm shift in wildlife tourism is just around the corner, and we as hoteliers should be ready for it.”

With the arrival of summers, safety and operations will be of paramount importance with the opening up of swimming pools, increase in weddings and the slow return of business travel. Speaking on this, Baljee concluded, “ Safety of guest and employees have always been of paramount importance to us. Across the group, we’ve created service, safety, and cleanliness standards according to WHO, state and national guidelines. Some of the additional precautionary measures adopted are: checking the temperature of our guest, ensuring they wear masks and follow social distancing protocols at all time and limiting the number of guests entering spaces like gyms, swimming pools and banquet halls. I strongly feel that the decline in business travel is not permanent. However, the complete recovery of business travel might be slower compared to the downturns of the past. While we continue to work with corporates, we’ve refocused our efforts towards reaching out to MSME’s and other small scale business operations.”