Planning for a Pan-India Presence

By Aditi Balbir INDIA’S BEAUTIFUL and often off the beaten track destinations have been the foundation for V Resorts. Our main Promoters Viewaim has been to introduce unique vacations or experiences for the leisure traveller. We have been consistently-developing effective solutions and carefully designing processes that help maintain and monetize properties-with-5-25 rooms, across offbeat locations of India. V provides enriched vacations that imbibe the local flavour and activities prevalent around each property. It engages with experts for designing experiences around yoga, rafting, kayaking, angling, bird watching, trekking, cycling, national park safaris and village tours. I strongly believe that a-business flourishes if it reflects what you stand for, your beliefs and values. In my case V Resorts began because of my passion for travelling and discovering new places. Hence we decided to focus only on offbeat vacation places and developing new destinations for travel. However, it has become much bigger in scope than just pure travel. At V Resorts, we tie up with the local community to help run our resorts - from recruitment, to market development, arranging local activities and cultural excursions to tying up with farmers and local artisans for fresh produce & local products - all with the intention to help the customer experience the particular culture of that place. We strongly believe that developing new destinations is viable and feasible only if it is followed by development of the community that lives there. And this is further fuelled by tourism. As people dart to visit those offbeat villages and towns, they in turn start to flourish. I would like to give you a short anecdote of a boatman in Sattal.-A boat ride in Sattal usually costs Rs 300 but the irony lies in the fact that a local boatman who takes us for a joyous ride in the peaceful lake of Sattal earns only Rs 50 from the total amount. In the process the annual income of a local boatmen is Rs 50000 only. But since the time we have started patronizing the local boatmen and selling boating as a package their income have simply doubled. With more than 2000 guests visiting our resorts in a year and almost everyone going for a boat ride we contribute to a great extent in increasing the yearly income of a local boatman. We-began our journey in 2010 with a unique property in Corbet and within 5 years of inception,-V-Resorts-has under its mantle 11-resorts-in the most exquisite locations in and around Delhi- 1 in-Rajasthan, 5 in Uttrakhand, 1 in Uttar Pradesh, 2 in Himachal Prades and 2 more coming up in Rajasthan. We are now focusing on the wildlife belt in Madhya Pradesh & Maharashtra (Pench, Panna, Kahna, Tadoba, Satpura) and another 5 destinations around Pune and Mumbai (Ganpatipue, Bhor, Nasik, etc). We've already started identifying a few places in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. The idea is to have 10 places each around Mumbai and Bangalore in the next 3-4 months. We plan to have approximately 1500 rooms (expanding to 100 resorts) under our brand in the next 2 years and be a pan Indian presence. Aditi Balbir is Founder and Managing Director of V Resorts.

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