Taj Group Launches Tajness Campaign

THE Taj Group today unveiled a global initiative called Tajness, which Managing Director and CEO Rakesh Sarna described as the new "rallying cry" of the 113-year-old company and "a celebration of all that is good in us".

Sarna also made it abundantly clear that "there has be some rationalisation in our portfolio". He said some hotels operating in markets where the purchasing power of the consumers was not commensurate with the services and quality expected from Taj Group hotels, "would have to exit".

Tertiary cities, the straight-talking Sarna explained, "could become a problem for us, but who knows how they will grow in the next ten years." That was a dilemma the group had to contend with, he admitted, indicating that the revamp he had rolled out when he took charge of the company two years ago was still not over. In Goa, for instance, Sarna has green-flagged a five- year revamp programme to "lift" the group's three hotels in the Sunshine State.

What is Tajness all about? It could be as ethereal as the smell of jasmine that would become the signature aroma of all the 100 Taj hotels by December 31, 2017, or as strategic as deciding to open supermarkets for the hotel staff so that they can benefit from the pricing benefits that the group gets from vendors, or replacing all petrol and diesel vehicles with ones that are electrically operated, or ensuring that the staff 'attire' (Sarna said he had banished the word 'uniform' from the group's lexicon) are made with 'heritage textiles' sourced from Benaras. 'Tajness', incidentally, is a word that has been floating around in conversations across the Taj Group for years. For Sarna, it expresses the core spirit of the group.

A radical move being proposed by Sarna as a part of the Tajness programme is to do away way with reception desks and cashiers in order to remove the "biggest pain point in the industry," namely, the check-in, check-out process. Eventually, all Taj hotels will have in-room check-in and check-out so that guests don't have to queue up anywhere.

"It is not just an emotion. You'll find a lot of meat on the bone," Sarna said about the programme, which is the outcome of two years spent understanding and operationalising the central emotion of Tajness: sincere care expressed through a series of 'rituals' to make the guests, as the group's Global Associate Vice President (Communications) Rakhee Lalvani put it, "happier and emotionally better connected" with the Taj hotels they check in at.

Tajness, Sarna believes, will also set the Taj Group apart from is competition in an industry that is seeing a lot of sameness because of consolidation (and Sarna should know all about it, having been with the Hyatt Corp for 35 years). "The more consolidation takes places," he said, "so does commoditisation. We want to step away from the commoditised world." For Sarna, it is an article of faith -- and a brand value that would define the Taj for years to come.