Club Med in India Pushed on B2B Business Model to Grow Volumes

Bikramjit Ray Jun 09, 2016

Club Med, one of the world's leading providers of experiential holidays, they call it upscale personalised holidays without the stress, entered the Indian market in 2007. The company, which began in 1950 and sells 'all-inclusive' vacations which includes everything from accommodation, meals, beverages and activities, is considered to be the world's 10th largest 'hotel chain' employing over 200,000 people globally of which around 2,700 are in the Asia Pacific region. They don't have any hotels in the Indian subcontinent as yet, but that is just a matter of time. BW Hotelier spoke to Manoj Upadhyay, Head Sales of Club Med India (see photo) about the chains plans for this market.

"There is a lot of opportunities in India. The travel industry, which for us in India is focussed on outbound, is growing year by year. Indians are travelling and are willing to opt for experiential holidays. The all-inclusive concept is also catching on to some extent," he began by saying.

Upadhyay explained that the company had changed its business model to a B2B one in 2014. "The reason was when we went to the market we found a huge gap. We found that even the travel fraternity was unaware about the concept of all-inclusive as offered by Club Med. We started doing presentations and road shows. Earlier the business was being driven by word of mouth by travellers who had gone on holiday with Club Med," he said.

The trend in this country is still for clients to go to travel agents for information and booking all ancilliary activities (like excursions, activities etc) while booking holidays, he said.

On the question of growth, Upadhyay said,"The growth we saw from 2013 onwards is around 46 percent. Before that it wasn't as much".

"From this year onwards we are trying to get the MICE specialists and show them what can be done in Club Med resorts across the world," he added.

The India office is a purely marketing one and the stress is all on educating the travel professionals and others about the product and its advantages, he added.

The average holiday length for Indian customers using Club Med is three nights and four days. Average costs of holidays range from $750 per head upwards.