Hospitality – Dutch Uncles

Here’s How Hotels Can Manage Revenue During The Pandemic

Aakash Sharma — Tue, 31 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

Hotels and the ancillaries of the hospitality industry are coming out of the pandemic disruption with many new changes and challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, almost the entire hotel industry in India went under as they recorded near-zero occupancy for an extended period, a situation never faced before.

Despite many adaptive measures, the challenge remains – how can hotels get the best out of their rental and regular infrastructure? What new ways of selling rooms should the industry players implement to be successful in the future?

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With challenges like unsold rooms, staff maintenance, property management, and many others, hotels have become creative with their offers and packages.

Here, we delve into some perspective answers to these fundamental questions.

Revenue Optimisation

Revenue and sales optimisation is the strategic management of price, inventory, demand and sales channels to maximise long-term sales growth. By leveraging the latest auxiliary technology trends that are driving hotel revenue into the new era, hotel businesses need to focus on the challenges and opportunities that directly impact guests and the commercial hotel industry.

These include forecasting, budgeting, performance measurement, inventory and channel management, sales and event management, revenue management systems, booking engines and decision-making tools.

Creativity in generating hospitality revenue

Hotels all around the globe are forced to rethink revenue generation during the COVID crisis fundamentally. Like so often, many successful concepts have started with putting the guest at the centre and looking at what they want, not what it is that is sold traditionally, like a room night with breakfast. What guests need today is a quiet space to work, an escape from everyday life, and simply a real experience COVID recedes.

Create co-working spaces

Numerous hotel businesses are transforming their traditional spaces. Following the trend, hospitality entrepreneurs can create work-from-hotel spaces for out-of-towners, digital nomads and local business people who do not wish to be restrained by office contracts. They can also create weekly and monthly packages for such customers, including WiFi, coffee, bottled water, snacks and catered lunch.

Utilising unused professional spaces

The corporate group and netting’s markets are ramping up at a slower pace than leisure and travel. Hoteliers can utilise new conference and function spaces to offer extracurricular activities such as yoga classes, wellness programs, cooking classes, book readings, author signing events, neighbourhood craft shows, etc.

Technology adoption and adaptation

Businesses of all sorts have gone online, including hospitality and travel industry players. To succeed in a post-pandemic world, hospitality enterprises must make sure to adopt digital models and educate their staff about the same.

From giving accessible booking services, on-the-call assistance, website detailing, application for different services, and many more, a wide range of customers can be attracted to a new set of hospitality businesses‘ functioning.

The post Here’s How Hotels Can Manage Revenue During The Pandemic appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

A Winning Lighting Scheme For Hotel Business: Avoid These Mistakes

Aakash Sharma — Sun, 29 Aug 2021 10:35:11 +0000

Hospitality means more than just the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests when it comes to business. In the industry, hospitality means creating the right atmosphere and letting guests discover a soothing and comforting world of beauty and tranquillity. Whether it is a hotel, restaurant or resort, designing a warm, attractive hotel experience is essential for creating a unique customer experience. And in that, ‘light’ plays an important role. The lighting of any space not only plays a role in the luminosity and beauty of the staying venue, but it also creates the perfect atmosphere and landscape.

Improper lighting levels

Improper and insufficient lighting can make people feel uncomfortable and insecure. While excessive light can cause too much of a glow causing headaches or strain on the eyes, lack of artificial light can harm a place’s natural perception and energy. For a customer, proper light levels help them identify areas that meet their needs and select the right place for their tasks.

Here we discuss some of the emerging lighting trends that hospitality businesses can adopt to give their customers a renewed sense of comfort.

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Continuous innovation and exploration of new channels have inspired lighting manufacturers to develop standard and highly innovative lighting solutions.

In addition to the traditional ceiling and wall lamps, designers in the industry have created attractive hotel environments by using many decorative solutions.

Arc lighting

Arc, or concealed lighting, has become an integral part of a lighting system that compensates for glare or dim lighting from pendant lamps. Arc lighting helps distribute the light evenly in a room. This sort of lighting solution helps in focusing and illuminating sculptures, artwork, table designs and more. It adds to the general lighting of hotel space and creatively innovates a hospitality business’s landscape.

Multi-level lighting

Multi-level lighting designs include many decorative and designer light levels, table lamps, floor lamps, artistic walls, lampshades, etc. Moreover, the new LED technology enabled lights allow designers to create creative lamps of any shape and shade to match the overall themes of businesses.

Pendant lights

The pendant lights, or hanger lights, are hung from any part of the ceiling of a hotel or such places. Businesses can use it with a bed, a corner sofa in the bedroom or an armchair in the living room to create a ‘new’ feeling of beauty for customers. Such lighting schemes give designers an open space to practice new and imaginative shapes that mainly cover the roof.

Decorative ceiling lights

Decorative ceiling lights are the primary source of ambient lighting in the hospitality industry. There are many options for this light source, including chandeliers, lamps, bulbs, and others. New designers are mixing the timeless classics of chandeliers and modern geometry to form combinations of patterns or abstract designs. This is all intended to attract customers and give them new attention points while staying at a place.

Regular electrical maintenance

Most high-end hotels and a majority of mid-size hospitality businesses use highly sophisticated glass fixtures for light purposes. Often such designs are easily damaged during the cleaning process, making them difficult for the users to use and guests to experience. Maintenance of glass fixtures on high ceilings and complex designs of chandeliers is a critical task.

Taking care of such aspects and paying attention to emerging trends can help hospitality businesses go a long way in their business journey. As COVID recedes globally, it is incumbent upon companies to ramp up operations and delve into the realms of creativity to give the pandemic-fatigued customers a new inspiration to travel and explore the world.

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Govt’s ECLGS to Provide Relief to Travel and Hospitality Sector Businesses

Aakash Sharma — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 03:35:04 +0000

The Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) has been specifically designed to respond to the unprecedented crisis brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has had a largely devastating impact on the production and other activities of India’s large MSME circle. ECLGS aims to reduce the financial difficulties faced by small and medium-sized enterprises and provide them with additional resources of up to Rs. 3 lakh crore in the kind of a completely secured emergency credit line.

Under the new rules, companies in the tourism, travel and hospitality sectors will be included in the ECLGS. The scheme will be relevant for accounts that had past dues up to Rs 500 crore as of Feb. 29, 2020.

Following the statement by the Reserve Bank of India that it would provide a Rs 50,000 crore cash window for infrastructure and healthcare companies, the hospitality industry also urged the Finance Ministry, the RBI and Tourism Ministry to ease some more rules and regulations of ECLGS to help the distressed industry.

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The new ECLGS emergency credit guarantee window will cover more sectors, and banks will be able to offer collateral-free loans to borrowers.

Challenges that will be eased by ECLGS rules for the Travel and Hospitality Sector

The Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality (FAITH) has stated that ECLGS should extend its support to tourism, travel and hospitality business accounts, including Special Memorandum-0 and Special Memorandum Account-1 whose past dues were not beyond 60 days as of Feb. 29, 2020.

Restoration of the disclosure guidelines required by the ECLGS Article 19 Operating Instructions will clarify lending institutions for sanctioning loans.

With new changes, considering eligible outstandings for tourism, travel and hospitality as an average of 11 months of FY 2020 – April 1, 2019, to February 29, 2020 – as just against the outstandings as of February 29, 2020, will help businesses.

A moratorium on interest will enable drawdown under the proposed scheme.

Benefits of ECLGS to Travel and Hospitality Sector Businesses

From overall tenure of four years, comprising of repayment of interest, under ECLGS 1.0, businesses will now be able to avail for a tenor of five years for their ECLGS loan, that is, repayment of interest only for the first 24 months with repayment of principal and interest in 36 months after that.

ECLGS 1.0 loans are eligible for additional support of up to 10%, raising the total guaranteed loan to 30 per cent of outstanding as of February 29, 2020.

In a nutshell, relief measures under the ECLGS will help the borrowers in the travel and hospitality sector gain liquidity in light of the incremental stress on debt servicing brought on by the second wave. With new measures, the government will also not be burdened with additional cost, and this will also improve the utilisation of the ECLGS funding pool.

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Regulatory and Compliance Updates for the Hospitality Sector

Aakash Sharma — Sat, 29 May 2021 05:35:03 +0000

Of all India’s service sectors, the tourism, travel, and hospitality sectors have emerged as the most important ones in recent years. India has a rich tourist culture, and the country’s historical heritage, diverse ecosystems, and territories. The many beautiful places in India make it one of the most visited places on earth.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic hindered the industry’s growth, during this challenging period, the Indian government took regular disciplinary and compliance measures to encourage the growth and development of the industry.

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Unlike other service sector industries, the hospitality industry requires various permits from the central government, such as consent from the Ministry of Tourism and regional authorities.

Indian Hotels and Hospitality Rules

According to the Constitution of India, ‘Hotels and Inns’ are governed by state laws. In Entry No. 34 of List II of the 7th Schedule of the Constitution of India, states have the legal authority to enact rules concerning hospitality. This covers issues like gambling and betting, among other topics related to hospitality and entertainment.

New Regulations by Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI)

Food regulatory agency FSSAI has recently mandated packaged drinking water and bottled water manufacturers to obtain Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) certification before obtaining a license or registration with a competent authority. The most recent guidelines came into effect on April 1, 2021. The Food Safety and Standards (Amendment) Act, 2008 requires all food business operators (FBOs) to obtain a license/registration before opening any food business.

COVID-19 Guidelines for Hospitality Players

The government has declared new guidelines for hotels and hospitality units, restaurants, shopping malls, etc., to prevent the spread of COVID-19. In addition to mandatory thermal screening, new separate safety rules have been established permanently to wear masks, maintain social distances, thoroughly disinfect premises and keep customers at a distance of 1.8 meters.

Guidelines for Hotels and Hospitality Businesses

Separate entrance and exit should be made available for guests, staff and daily needs.

Hotels adopt contactless processes like digital QR codes for payments, electronic forms, and digital check-in and check-out processes.

For room service, communication between guests and in-house staff should be via intercom/mobile phone.

It is essential that the room and other services are kept clean each time a guest checks out.

Guidelines for Restaurants

Encourage takeout food rather than eating food on site. Food should only be served after proper precautions have been taken.

Businesses must maintain sufficient physical distances in the seating arrangement between the customers.

Digital payment methods and contactless orders need to be promoted.

The kitchen staff must follow social distancing rules and regularly sanitize the kitchen area.

What Can Hospitality Businesses do to Stay Afloat?

As the pandemic is still raging in India, times are tough for businesses, especially the hospitality, travel, and tourism sectors. But challenging times call for innovative thinking and a positive call for action. Companies can work towards their survival and revival by embracing vaccine drives run by the government.

Adhering to the guidelines mentioned above can further improve chances of survival amidst the pandemic as essential people like journalists, medical staff, etc., continue to travel in an emergency. In the end, businesses ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome is the key driver for their vitality.

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