MICE, Events to help hotels boost summer business

Star hotels are headed for a good summer season with many corporates lining up conferences, fairs and meetings to perk up their employees ahead of an expected economic revival after the general elections.

Despite summer being substantially lean season for leisure business in most Indian cities, hotels have managed to keep their cash registers ringing through meetings, incentives, conference and exhibitions (MICE), educational fairs and long stay business. Star hotels expect their summer business to grow 12% from last year as per an ET report.

"We anticipate almost 10%-12% growth in summer business compared to last year, as a lot of multinationals are conducting conferences and events to re-energise their teams for the positive times after the elections," said Ashish Kumar Rai, general manager at The Leela, Mumbai.

Luxury hotel Sofitel at Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC), one of Mumbai's big business districts where many big banks and MNCs have offices, has been clocking occupancy of 70%, despite the election week. "During summer, the business usually drops at least 15% as compared to winter months, but we are more optimistic about corporate business this season," said Biswajit Chakraborty, general manager at Sofitel hotel.

In Bangalore, hotels are seeing improved forward bookings for the summer months with a number of corporate events, including the QS World MBA Tour and World Education Fair, coming up.

"With the elections on, while we have built a fair bit of corporate business, we are more dependent on MICE and educational fairs which gets more than 30% of our business during summers," said Prakash Viswanathan, director- sales & marketing, JW Marriott, Bangalore.

P R Srinivas, director of hospitality services in India at commercial real estate services firm Cushman and Wakefield, said yield management techniques - or, selling rooms and services at the right price - is critical to attract business segments such as MICE, fairs and packaged tours during summer when inbound leisure business drops substantially.

Sure enough, hotels have come up with attractive packages, flash sales and food festivals to drive business in the summer season.

Grand Hyatt Mumbai conducted a flash sale between March 1 and 17 as part of its 10th year celebration. It allowed customers to book a room at 50% of the prevailing best available rate (BAR) for bookings till September.

"The flash sale has given us good base business till September and on any given day we will have minimum 15-20 rooms booked," said David Mansfield, general manager at Grand Hyatt Mumbai and the hotel chain's area director for Mumbai, Pune and Goa.The hotel sold more than 1,800 room nights through the sale.

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