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Most of us do not take the road less traveled. But then you have Sarovar Hotels and Resorts who did, and they became trailblazers in the Indian hospitality industry.

Sarovar operates 96 hotels across 55 destinations worldwide. One of the leading hotel chains in India, Sarovar was founded by Anil Madhok (Executive Chairman) and Ajay Bakaya (Managing Director) nearly a quarter of a century ago. Sarovar Hotels was the first mover in India to adopt the asset-light model, where it manages and services other hotel properties through strategic alliances with other chains.

Sarovar started operations when it took franchises of Park Plaza and Park Inn brands for India. A decade later (circa 2005), Sarovar began promoting its own brands: Portico, Hometel and Premiere. Fast-forward to another decade and the Louvre Hotels Group, one of Europe’s leading hospitality brands, purchased a stake in Sarovar in 2017. Another milestone in this impressive growth story.

Orange Tiger Hospitality (OTH) is a hotel management company founded in 2017 and based out of Mumbai. The privately-held company currently has over 40 hotels under its portfolio. Mastiff Hotels, Kyriad Hotels and Citrus Classic are some of the hospitality brands that are managed by OTH.

Shaleen Mathur, Co-Founder & Chief Revenue Officer at OTH, is a maverick. He started his career in banking, then had a brief stint in the music industry and finally settled into hospitality. With over two decades of experience in corporate sales, Mathur has always been a risk-taker. “The journey of OTH actually started in 2005 when our current directors and I became colleagues. We took the leap in 2017 to start our own hospitality venture, as we agreed that our risk-appetite would only reduce as time progressed. We saw an opportunity in hospitality and never looked back,” says Mathur.

Shatabdi Dutta, General Manager (Marketing) at Sarovar, believes that Simplotel’s USP is its digital marketing service. “Simplotel helped us rank in terms of traffic generation across online channels and drive conversions. We received great technical support from the team, which we lacked earlier. The website design is great and user friendly. We have received positive feedback from guests that the booking journey does not take much time, is hassle free, and most importantly, the mobile site is responsive!”

Prior to Simplotel, OTH had a booking engine vendor that also handled the websites of all the hotels in its portfolio. Unfortunately, as the pandemic hit, the vendor had to shut shop. It was then that OTH decided to onboard Simplotel Hotel E-commerce (Website Design and Booking Engine). “We heard all the good work that Simplotel was doing to grow direct bookings for hotels. We began our partnership with Simplotel in April. There were a few teething issues initially. However, once we went live in August, our direct bookings across all three brands have been growing exponentially month-over-month,” says Mathur.

OTH currently does nearly 27% of its total occupancy online. Simplotel Hotel E-commerce contributes to 7% of its total online business and 2% to overall occupancy. “We had never received direct bookings across our brand websites previously. So the moment we received our first direct booking, we were over the moon. The goal till the end of the next fiscal year is to grow our online business and hit at least 5% of our total occupancy in direct bookings,” says Mathur.

Mathur loves that his hotel websites are user-friendly and provide a seamless booking journey to guests. “The other thing I love is that the Simplotel Booking Engine keeps on evolving. There was this one instance where we wanted to add additional amenities on the booking engine. We also had the same conversation with our online travel agency (OTA). Their team was stalling us. However, the moment Simplotel did this for us, they agreed to replicate the same.”

Within a year of onboarding Simplotel, Sarovar had hit over 3x growth in revenue from direct bookings. In another year, this growth doubled to 6x since it went live with Simplotel. “We were able to use Simplotel’s technology to begin promotions and campaigns that gave us a major boost”, says Khan. The average monthly organic traffic also nearly doubled for The Louvre Hotels-backed hospitality chain. However, this was only possible as Sarovar had managed to put their vision into action and achieve the almost impossible in such a short span of time.

On personal learnings from the COVID-19 pandemic, both Khan and Dutta agree that they have learned to live life more passionately and prioritize family. On the professional front, they have learned to think out of the box to jumpstart Sarovar’s operations and forge deeper connections with their partners.

Mastiff Select Suite Master Bedroom Kalaburagi

Notwithstanding technology, Mathur adds that the unique selling proposition of Simplotel is its customer support. “The culture at Simplotel is always customer first. They are always receptive to feedback and criticism. We are able to communicate on the same wavelength. This is true partnership.”

Mathur has also been leveraging Simplotel’s scorecards to track Google Analytics 4; and length of stay and advance purchase patterns. “We have been using the scorecard insights to effectively send out email and SMS campaigns for nurturing and remarketing.”

For people who wish to enter hospitality, Mathur believes they need to keep two things in mind. The first is to be trustworthy. “Your reputation precedes you wherever you go. Therefore, trust is crucial,” says Mathur. And the second is to embrace technology.

Sarovar sees 500% growth in revenue from direct bookings

Orange Tiger-managed Mastiff, Kyriad sees its hotels hit 7% in direct bookings out of total online business

Mastiff Hotels, Kyriad Hotels and Citrus Classic see direct room nights through respective websites skyrocket within a month of onboarding Simplotel.

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