Hitting the reset button

Bjorn De Niese, Director, Mayfair Spa Resort & Casino and Director, RightClique Hospitality believes it’s time to look past F&B and selling rooms to make revenue during the lockdown period.

- Bjorn De Niese

How are you dealing with the ongoing crisis? what kind of industry damage are you calculating?

Currently it’s a lot of e-learning, research and rest that’s helping me through the ongoing crisis. I have been spending several hours a week on looking at alternate revenue streams and its viability that could supplement earnings for hospitality establishments in the days to come. The times when we focused on just accommodation and food & beverage sales for a hotel will need to change and look at all the ancillaries that could be amplified to ensure a hotel is able to earn some revenues even in a lockdown like situation. The hotel industry has taken and will continue to take a beating for a while in my opinion. The branded and organised hotels clock annual earnings of around ₹38,000 crore (approximately USD 5 billion) and the unorganised hotels will account for nothing less than another ₹40,000 crore. We could expect damages at around 60 per cent on the annual industry earnings.

Do you think, domestic travel will drive demand for the next few years? are hotels prepared for this?