Category — Tourism & Hospitality

According to BusinessTravelNews.com, the most popular function of Mobile websites and Apps  is to check-in at hotels and airlines. More than 60% of the companies asked are already making use of either a Mobile Website or an app to check-in. Then, 50% said they are using it to store and access itinerary on their smartphones. After this, come the check-in of the hotel and the access to the destination information.

For travelers to India, these mobile functions can be very important, since the home office and the travel agents may not be readily accessible during India time. (The country is  8.5 to 13.5 hours ahead of USA time depending on season and location in the United States).  India’s airlines are ahead of hotels in supporting mobile and remote checkin. In fact many airlines support SMS or TEXT check-in as well.

When it is about popular sports played in India, the country there is almost only one game that matters in India, cricket. But when it comes to watching games on TV, other kind of sport becomes popular such as football, basketball, tennis, cycling or golf.

According to Chitra Johri, Vice President or Bradford license India, “the Indian youth finds it more edgy to get associated with these games through merchandise as it gives them an attitude value”.

Akash Jain, Sr. Director Business development & Partnerships, National Basketball Association India, says“going beyond the traditional offerings of jerseys, t-shirts and hats allow fans to display their support for our teams in their homes, at work or school, and in their everyday life with casual wear.

When promoting in India, the brands need to make sure to adapt to the region they are in, with a different strategy to engage the audience well. Here is what WWE does: they offer very high collectability and that works wonders for promotions. In India specifically, they are currently running a cross-category retail promotion with Landmark, and on the FMCG front they have recently partnered with Parle (clothing company) for a promotion involving WWE Slam Attax trading cards by Topps. Moreover, they also bring down WWE Superstars every year to India and that lends them a great opportunity for promoting WWE using talent that features weekly in programming.”

When I wrote my book on Business with India, I chose to include a famous poem about the blind men and the elephant in the introduction and the editors put an elephant on the cover. To me, the elephant, with its long memory, complexity, precision, strength,  and skills has always been a better metaphor, than the tiger or the peacock ( India’s national bird) or any other symbol.

Today I was reminded about the first elephant poem I ever heard and read. I think I was in sixth grade at the Methodist High School in Kanpur, India when my English teacher, the colorful spinster Miss Josephine DeCunha, read it to us. The joyous ditty has stayed in mind ever since.  Here in America, so many kids think of Dumbo and peanuts, when the hear the word elephant. But Asian elephants are smart, sensitive and even playful creatures (as the Emmy-nominated NY Life commercials also captured here. And I have written about my fascination with elephants before here on this blog.

The Elephant

By Herbert Asquith

Here comes the elephant

Swaying along,

With his cargo of children

All singing a song:

To the tinkle of laughter

He goes on his way,

And his cargo of children

Have crowded him with May.

His legs are in leather

And padded his toes;

He can root up an oak

With a whisk of his nose:

With a wave of his trunk,

And a turn of his chin,

He can pull down a house,

Or pick up a pin.

Beneath his grey forehead

A little eye peers!

Of what is he thinking

Between those wide ears?

Of what does he think?

If he wished to tease,

He could twirl his keeper

Over the trees.

If he were not kind,

He could play cup and ball

With Robert and Helen

and Uncle Paul:

But that grey forehead,

Those crinkled ears,

Have learned to be kind

In a hundred years!

And so with the children

He goes on his way,

To the tinkle of laughter

And crowded with the May.

The Expedia Group announced plans to set up a global technology centre in India as part of its enhanced investment in India. The Expedia group’s Indian subsidiary companies also moved to a brand new office premise, spread over 42,000 sq feet in Gurgaon near New Delhi. The facility will primarily house employees working on sales and marketing, research and development, and travel supply support services activities in support of Expedia Group’s Expedia-brand, Expedia.co.in, Hotels.com-brand, and Egencia (corporate travel) businesses.

The Gurgaon set-up represents one of the Expedia Group’s largest facilities outside of Expedia, Inc.’s Bellevue, Washington corporate headquarters. The new office is the largest facility for the group in Asia Pacific and the fifth largest globally. Expedia Online Travel Services India Private Limited (Expedia India), the Indian subsidiary of Expedia Inc., also plans to hire 300 people locally by end of 2012 as it strengthens its workforce in the region.
As the R&D hub for the region, the team will create travel applications for local as well as the global markets. India will be the only other location besides Bellevue, where the Expedia Group will work on solutions across all brands and platforms. The Gurgaon location will house a balanced mix of teams across operations, search and supply functions along with core common infrastructure teams At present, the Expedia Group has R&D presence globally in 11 centers in Bellevue, London, Springfield, San Francisco, Geneva, Paris, Prague, Montreal, and now Gurgaon.

Announcing India’s growing importance and launch of the R&D centre, Edmond Mesrobian, Chief Technology Officer, Expedia, Inc. said, “India is of strategic importance to us and offers us access to a vast pool of bright technology talent. As one of the fast growing travel markets and given our success in this region, we are delighted to be able to expand our presence by way of setting up an R&D centre that will significantly contribute innovations and new solutions across our full suite of brands both here and globally. We are bullish on the long-term potential of the market and are expecting to hire 300 resources before the end of the year ”.
Vikram Malhi, Country Head, Expedia.co.in commented, “Expedia.co.in has seen tremendous success in the Indian market over the last 3 years. At Expedia, we are committed to facilitating a seamless and fulfilling travel experience. We continually strive towards improvising ourselves and remain in pursuit of innovation, bringing to the Indian consumers, a new travel purchase experience supported by a strong supply of travel products and services.”
“Our Egencia business brings the global best in class technology & operating solutions to business travelers in India, a key emerging market for us” said Gaurav Sundaram, Country Director Egencia India Travel Private Limited. “Whilst our strategy is growth through innovation and investment in technology to better serve our Indian customers, developing and sustaining the next generation of technology experts locally in Gurgaon is an exciting byproduct.”
“The opening of the new office in India is an exciting step on way of Hotels.com’s strategic goal to establish as the leading hotel booking website in India said Abhiram Chowdhry, Sr. Director of Marketing, Hotels.com Asia Pacific. The Indian market has great potential and one where our singular positioning as the hotel booking expert has shown great results already. We intend to continue with investments in our product, technology and marketing and offer ever greater value to address the hotel booking needs of the Indian consumer. The new office will be a great conduit for us as a brand in India.”

Sahara of India is talks with Oasis West Realty to pick up a controlling stake in the Beverly Hilton hotel. The owner of Oasis, Israeli-American entrepreneur Beny Alagem, approached Sahara to sell 55% stake in the iconic hotel for $340 million according to a newspaper report

Lucknow, India based Sahara Group led by Subrata Roy bought a majority stake in New York’s iconic Plaza hotel for $640 million. Two years ago, it acquired the Grosvenor Hotel in London.  The 57-year-old Beverly Hilton, on the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica boulevards in Beverly Hills, California, hosts 175 red carpet events every year, including the Golden Globe Awards.

Roy’s company also owns Sahara Star hotel in Mumbai, and has interests in real estate, financial services, information technology, sports and entertainment. It also owns the Pune cricket franchise in the Indian Premier League and is part owner of Force India F1 team.