The Indian Social-Event enterprise!

Action-packed and ready to strike…

Where there is an opportunity, there stems a devil! The country simply loves to celebrate! With made-to-order occasions created out of thin air or a six-month-long meticulously designed wedding, hotels in India never had it this good. The Indian hospitality industry's unique revenue trait, where Food & Beverage contributes more to the revenue kitty than the segment is credited. The Meetings industry's mite seldom goes challenged, and the discerning Indian finds more occasions to celebrate! Events to celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, kitty parties, family, and friend's get-togethers, naming ceremonies and, of course, the big fat Indian wedding all bring cheer to the table! We are not talking about corporate events yet, that bring in the big moneybags.

The Indian Event Space: Mordor Intelligence, in a report on the Indian Event Industry, estimated India's events and exhibition market to be at USD 5.23 billion in 2024, and is expected to reach USD 7.80 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 8.31% during the forecast period (2024–2029).

Personal Events: Unique Indian Perspective – What goes into a family when selecting a suitable venue to create an event out of an occasion, and do hotels strategise to woo this burgeoning segment? Having been in the industry, before the evolution of the term event management to now 'Event Activation', have hardly come across hotels creating a specialised marketing centre to add commercial value to their event spaces, apart from a few branded five-star hotel chains. At most hotels, the banquet management team is not necessarily your event marketing team. The revenue stream can be even bigger with inputs of Food & Beverage, rental of audio-visual equipment, hall rental charges, accrued business from rooms, etc.

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) estimated a business worth ?4.25 trillion in just 23 days of this year's Indian wedding season last year between a three-week window of November 23 and December 15, with around 3.5 million weddings being held, resulting in an estimated ?4.25 trillion.

There is one report, that also valued the Indian birthday party market at over 200 crores, while the decoration market in India is projected to grow by 6.72% (2024–2029), resulting in a market volume of US$0.54 billion in 2029. A report by Technavio also projected that the India cake market size is projected to increase by USD 212.66 million, at a CAGR of 6.14% between 2023 and 2028.

Speaking about the new era hotels that seem to be flooding the market with imported standards, especially from Europe and the US, who seem more interested in getting to the magic number of 200 properties in India, than creating the right variation of their product to suit the Indian market. Service and amenity standards currently being enforced in the name of global parity are absurd. There have been investments in crores to create a profitable entity, and this has left Indian hoteliers in the lurch, not necessarily due to the economic situations we endure.

One set of hotels in Bangalore, with a combined inventory of 500 rooms, and a couple of international brands to make the owners feel proud, has the meeting room infrastructure of a banquet hall measuring 2500 square feet! How do you explain to a prospective client, who wishes to book a hotel for his mega residential conference or wants to host his big fat Indian wedding, that he can take his room business, but has no venue to host the banquet? Indians, by trait, need any excuse to get a gathering on to host a lunch or dinner, whether it is for a baby naming ceremony or an anniversary party. The scorn for Food and Beverage sales is not justified, when in India, sometimes F&B sales constitute up to 50% of revenue. It should do well for hotels to broad base their client profile. For city hotels, corporate business is welcome, business on weekends is priceless!

It is surely not rocket science that Indian cities at most times are down by 60 - 70% from Thursday to Sunday, i.e., there would be over a minimum of 200,000 unsold room nights! There has been virtually no effort being made by any of the major hotel associations to help hotels tie up with tourism boards, deal with major MICE networks or even travel companies to help create a transparent room rate mechanism combined with a sound promotional strategy that would help generate business from varied markets such as MICE or leisure.

What does it take to position your event spaces amid your glowing hotel brand? If your Event Spaces Food & Beverage contributes more than 30% of your turnover, get it a branding strategy! Venue brands bring with them; not only standards and total recall but a right unique brand identity and distribution. ?

In an era when hotel projects are more often part of a multi-use facility with retail, residences and commercial spaces thrown in, event spaces will have to strive for their unique niche. Of late, there has been a concerted effort by leading hotel brands such as Marriott, ITC Hotels, Hilton, and Taj to create separate marketing teams to reach out to the MICE segment. Marketing MICE requires different skill sets, not necessarily align with those of the revenue managers. Hotels should create a business model, where Event managers, Associations and Professional Conference Organizers (PCOs) are partnered with and considered as part of their distribution strategy. And yes; commissions are important! They work in most international markets and will do good in India as well.

A day when you will have branded and franchised event spaces is not far. Creating and managing an 'Event Space brand' will bring in Event standards, improved guest feedback and enhanced occupancies. Creating unique brand identities and focus for event spaces will also take on branded hotels, especially in the four and five-star segments. It is not far ahead, that with increased demand for more technology, and enhanced client requirements, an era of specialised companies managing Event spaces is not far behind! Outsourced venue management!

Somehow hotels around the world have always been reluctant to a radical shift in branding strategy. But in an era, where competition gets fierce, and specialisation takes over, it is never too late to reinforce branding standards on individual profit centres such as event spaces, and health clubs and one might be tempted to add ‘laundry services’ to the list!

The advent of up-to-date revenue management strategies has virtually taken over decision-making about the functioning of sales. Marketing Event Space is still left untouched by the new era of revenue managers due to the customisation it requires. With artificial intelligence taking over much faster than you expect, selling event space for hotels maybe all at a ‘click of a button!’