Traveling is fun. But the business of traveling isn’t. However, Sonal Vidyarthi, Founder & CEO of Shivoy DMC, has made both her passion. Set up in 2018, Shivoy DMC is emerging as the rising star in the Indian travel trade. The company recently won the award for the Best DMC of the year at India International Travel Mart (IITM 2019). In an exclusive interview with Voyager’s World, Vidyarthi shares the making of the brand.
Tell us about the conceptualization of Shivoy DMC. What led to the formation of the brand?
Shivoy DMC happened more out of passion rather than a business idea. I have always been passionate about traveling and exploring new places, people, and cultures. We wanted to share the same experience with others who love to travel, so I decided to start a destination management company. The idea was to become a master of few rather than being the jack of all trades. This is why as a company we chose destinations that are exciting with unique offerings for the traveler.
What destinations is Shivoy catering to?
We started off with Bhutan, and we expanded to four other international destinations, including Israel, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, and Nepal. In domestic, we cater to the Northeast and Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
What kind of services does Shivoy offer?
Shivoy is professional services company with local knowledge, expertise and resources, working in the design and implementation of events, activities, tours, transportation and program logistics. We provide a ground service based on local knowledge of our destinations. These services include transportation, hotel accommodation, restaurants, activities, excursions, conference venues, themed events, gala dinners, logistics, meetings, incentive schemes as well as helping with overcoming language barriers.
By acting as purchasing consortia from Shivoy DMC, our company can provide preferential rates based on the buying power we have with our preferred suppliers.
How does Shivoy set itself apart from its competitors?
Shivoy DMC believes in the concept of creating experiences. We think global and act local. We promote the destination and everything that is available for our tourists to experience based on their interests.
Our vision is to create travel experiences that are unique and socially responsible, by offering reliable, cost-effective, high-quality efficient and effective services to our customers.
Our mission is to manage the travel requirements of our customers and add value to customer’s travel spend. We tend to focus on the customers’ requirements and come up with effective strategies for meeting their demands in an efficient manner.
What kind of technologies is Shivoy using to cater to customers?
Besides social media tools to reach out to customers, we, at Shivoy DMC, have have been integrating with the latest technology. CRM has been the key to maintain our database. Accounting software also comes in handy. In the future, we would like to have our own app and GPRS tracking for tourists. We are keen on associating with technology companies that make our work easy.
What are the challenges of running a startup? How are you overcoming these?
When we started off, one crucial problem we faced was building trust among our partners and customers. We wanted to make sure our partners trust us with our destination management activities and support us in the setting up of destination offices. To ensure transparency, we devised a simple policy: We say what we do and we do what we say. We neither overcommit nor undercommit. This attitude has resulted in the market beginning to recognize us as a genuine company that delivers products and packages as per our promise.
What are the key characteristics required to sell travel better?
In order to excel in the business of travel, we strongly feel traits like integrity, teamwork, excellence, service, fun, focused, responsibility, loyalty, respect, and readiness could help.
