Where there is an opportunity, there stems a devil! The country simply loves to celebrate! With made-to-order occasions created out of thin air or a six-month long meticulously designed wedding, hotels in India never had it this good. The Indian hospitality industry’s unique revenue trait, where food & beverage contributes more to the revenue kitty than the segment is credited. The meetings industry’s mite seldom goes challenged when the discerning Indian finds more occasions to celebrate! Events to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, kitty parties, family and friend’s get-togethers, naming ceremonies, and of course, the big fat Indian wedding all bring cheer to the table! We are not talking about corporate events yet that bring in the big moneybags.
The Indian Event Space
The ‘Indian Convention Promotion Bureau states that of a total of 8,294 events tracked, India has a market share of 1.1% (Asia & Middle East has a 19.5% share) with an estimated size of the MICE industry in India around Rs 4,000–5,500 crores. Still a very minuscule part of a global market space of over USD 65 billion!
Personal Events: Unique Indian Perspective
What goes into a family selecting a suitable venue to create an event out of an occasion, and do hotels strategise to woo this burgeoning segment? Having been in the industry before the evolution of the term event management to now ‘event activation’, I have hardly come across hotels creating a specialised marketing centre to add commercial value to their event spaces apart from a few branded five-star hotel chains. At most hotels, the banquet management team is not necessarily your event marketing team. The revenue stream can be just bigger with inputs of Food & Beverage, rental of audio-visual equipment, hall rental charges, accrued business from rooms, etc.
Speaking about the new era hotels that seem to be flooding the market with imported standards, especially from Europe and the US, who seem more interested in getting to the magic number of 100 properties in India than creating the right variation to their product to suit the Indian market. Service and amenity standards currently being enforced in the name of global parity are absurd. There have been investments made in crores to create a profitable entity, and they have left Indian hoteliers in the lurch, not necessarily due to the economic situations we endure. One set of hotels in Bangalore with a combined inventory of 500 rooms, a couple of international brands to make the owners feel proud, has meeting room infrastructure of a banquet hall measuring 2500 square feet! How do you explain to a prospective client, who wishes to book a hotel for his mega residential conference or wants to host his big fat Indian wedding, that he can take his room business but has no venue to host the banquet? Indians, by trait, need any excuse to get a gathering on to host a lunch or dinner, whether it is for a baby naming ceremony or an anniversary party. The scorn for food and beverage sales is not justified; when in India, sometimes F&B sales constitute up to 50% of revenue. It should do well for hotels to broaden their client profile. For city hotels, corporate business is welcome; business on weekends is priceless!
What does it take to position your event spaces amid your glowing hotel brand? If your Event Spaces Food & Beverage contributes more than 30% of your turnover, get it a branding strategy! The hotel brands bring with them standards and total recall, but the right unique brand identity for your event space will make it stand out amid hardened competition. In an era when hotel projects are more often part of a multi-use facility with retail, residences, and commercial spaces thrown in, event spaces will have to strive for their unique niche. A day when you will have branded and franchised event spaces is not far. Creating and managing an ‘Event Space brand’ will bring in event standards, improved guest feedback, and enhanced occupancies. Creating unique brand identities and focus for event spaces will also take on branded hotels, especially in the four and five-star segments. It is not far ahead that, with the increased demands concerning technology and enhanced client requirements, the era of specialised companies managing event spaces is not far behind! Outsourced Venue Management!
Somehow hotels around the world have always been reluctant to a radical shift in branding strategy. But in an era where competition gets fierce and specialisation takes over, it is never too late to reinforce branding standards on individual profit centres such as event spaces and health clubs, and one might be tempted to add laundry services to the list!
The advent of up-to-date revenue management strategies has virtually taken over decision-making about the functioning of sales. Marketing event space is still left untouched by the new era of revenue managers due to the customisation it requires.