GINGER- THE NANO TAJ by Shruti Kamble MMS-I

  Ginger Hotels revolutionized hospitality industry by bringing in the 3 star hotels and concentrating on “smart basics and no unnecessary frills”. The NANO TAJ- Ginger Hotels, is the new name of IndiOne, the hotel chain from Roots Corporation, a subsidiary of Indian Hotels group. It is a perfect example of strategy driven by customer insights and right marketing mix thus creating customer value. The target market for Ginger Hotels is budget conscious yet comfort seeking youth who do not relate the cheap rates with the poor standards.

The 4 P’s of Ginger explicitly shows that it follows the systems and process strategy diligently.

Product – Each property has about 100-200 rooms which have basic amenities such as electronic locks, mini-fridge and tea / coffee maker. Guest facilities include a meeting room, gymnasium facilities, a cyber café, an ATM as well as Wi-Fi connectivity by Tata Indicom in the public areas and individual rooms. They also have a room specially designed for physically challenged group. It clearly depicts simplicity combined with modernity with no compromise on comfort.

Price – Single room costs around Rs. 999/- only. It manages to keep costs low by cutting down on travel agents cost by online selling of rooms, cut

GINGER- THE NANO TAJ

Feb  2011

 

short room service and increasing the occupancy rate. Their USP is standard low price and value for money which differentiates it from other hotels of Indian hotel group like 5 STAR Taj hotels and 4 STAR Vivanta.

Promotions – Social media and word of mouth publicity arising out of high degree of customer satisfaction remains the key promotional strategy which helps in increasing the bottom line by eliminating irrelevant elements of marketing mix.

Place – Taking into consideration the fact that in a service industry a room or seat remaining vacant is an opportunity wasted, its geographical segmentation includes business centres and popular pilgrimages. It makes great sense to have presence at such places because they have year long traffic of visitors increasing the occupancy rate which is very important for a buget hotel like Ginger. The upcoming hotels in Airoli - Mumbai, Noida, Hyderabad and Tirupur indicate that it is saving on land cost by making its presence in suburbs. A penny saved is penny earned.

CoMarketing -Tie up with Cafe Coffee Day for a 24 hour outlet which will provide cheap and hygienic food will help Ginger save its cost on Food and Beverages segment which earns only 15% of its revenue. The money can be deployed for leveraging other services. It will also “ginger up” the youth quotient of Ginger hotels as tagline of CCD says, “a lot can happen over a coffee”.

Another such innovation is Public Private Partnership with Indian Railways, converting Rail Yatri Niwas to ginger hotels at Delhi. It will pull in the budget conscious crowd, small and medium business entrepreneurs coming to Delhi. They are also planning to build up their hotels on top floors of malls. One such hotel is constructed in Ludhiana. So the next time you are travelling make sure to keep an eye out for the Ginger colours to chase your travelling blues away.