Five-star hotel chains in India are counting big on weddings in a pandemic-hit market. Although on a much smaller scale, most of them are seeing recovery in bookings and inquiries for the upcoming wedding season in November and December. They are also counting on couples who had earlier planned their weddings abroad but are now considering options within India.
Take the case of Indian Hotels Co Ltd (IHCL). Since the chain reopened in June, the hospitality arm of the Tata Group has seen bookings touch almost 70-80 per cent of the pre-Covid phase. The months ahead also look promising with its booking register running busy from next month till December 2021.
Says Renu Basu, senior vice president—global sales and marketing at IHCL: “If there is any business inquiry coming, it’s for the wedding.” She adds that the scale is much smaller. As per government guidelines a maximum of 50 people can congregate for a social gathering.
One of the reasons weddings as a business segment have remained relatively resilient to the current situation is the high importance in Indian culture given to dates on which couples tie the knot. The event has strong regional influences, says Basu. There are also many instances of people having simple ceremonies at home now looking to celebrate the occasion with close relatives, she adds.
Parul Thakur, Senior Area Director Sales and Distribution-South Asia, Marriott International echoes Basu's views. Since the lockdown curbs were eased, weddings and related events have led the recovery for Marriott, she says.
“During the past two months, these events have constituted nearly 70 per cent of our leads, contributing to our group and catering revenues in the country. The remaining months of the year display a similar trend, with an extremely strong wedding and socials pipeline across its portfolio of hotels," she added. "The scale, however, has reduced comparatively with social distancing norms as prescribed by the local governments."
Nandivardhan Jain, MD and CEO, Noesis Capital, a hotel consulting firm, doesn’t read much into these bookings given the small scale. “As long as the restrictions on the number of people who can attend a wedding remain, these bookings hardly help the hotels,” he says. "It won’t move the needle in terms of revenue and profitability. The food and beverage segment that accounts for half of a hotels’ revenue has been completely wiped out."
ITC Hotels has been hosting its fair share of weddings this year, said the company’s spokesperson.
It has also been hosting a number of ‘virtual weddings’, she said. This includes exquisite cuisine out of its “Gourmet Couch” menu. These events are held virtually between the couple's families and friends, all of whom are in different locations. “Our specially-curated menus are planned around the preferences of the families and are delivered pan-India in a synchronised manner, so that they can all dine together.”
The regulation around social distancing and curbs on the number of people have spawned intimate and more customised services for the guests, such as customised menu and aesthetically-crafted meals and desserts, says IHCL’s Basu.
While IHCL has seen strong enquiries for its properties in Mumbai, Rajasthan, Gurugram, Kolkatta, Chennai and Bengaluru for the latter part of the year, for Marriott, Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chandigarh take the lead for the wedding business currently.
For IHCL, most of the bookings at this point are for non-residential weddings (hotels are booked only for day-long ceremonies, not for 2-3 days). Locations like Rajasthan and Agra that didn’t have a lockdown have seen a good pick up. For instance, Rajasthan had several weddings in June, says Basu. Meanwhile, with the curbs on movement easing, the trend of wedding destinations in cities like Jodhpur, Hrishikesh, Nashik, Goa which can be driven to from near-by cities, is also catching up, she added.