1

1.0 Introduction

Indian tourism and hospitality industry have become one of the key drivers of

economic growth in India. India is an ancient civilization and their population was

1.252 billion at year 2013 (WorldBank, 2013), and it has advantages in development

of tourism. India rich in tourism resources due to its historical and religious states.

The Main India offers several touristic options due to its vastness and diversity,

which attracting all kind of tourist from all of the world. For examples, Agra has been

ranked on the 16th place in the world focus on the protection of cultural centre, which

boosts cultural tourism. Moreover, Himalayas Mountain attracts a lot of adventure

tourists (IBEF, 2015).

The total contribution of Tourism Industry in India to GDP was 6.2% in 2013

and 6.3% in 2014 (wttc.org, 2014). Foreign Tourist Arrivals (FTAs) in India has

grown slowly in the last 3 years, 7.46 million at 2014, 6.8 million at 2013 and 6.6

million at 2012. Foreign exchange earnings (FEEs) in India grew 7.1% in 2014

compared to 5.9% in 2013 (ibef.org, 2015). According to India Tourism Statistic

(2012), The Delhi Airport had the highest number of FTAs in India followed by

Mumbai airport, Chennai airport, Bengaluru airport and Kolkata airport.

According to David Scowsill, president & CEO, WTTC (2014), India has great

chance to benefit from visa reforms and infrastructure improvements under the new

government. However, David Scowsill also said that India’s hospitality and tourism

sector economy is comparatively low towards the contribution overall in India’s

economy in contrast with others industries. This reflect the seriousness of the

problem that India faces.

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2.0 Hotel Background

The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, Mumbai was established in 1903. It has

expansnded by constructing an adjacent tower block and increasing the number of

rooms from 225 to 565 rooms. Taj Mahal Palace & Tower operated under Tata

Group, Mr Jamsetji N Tata. The Taj Hotel comprise the Indian Hotels Company

Limited (IHCL) and its subsidiaries become one of the Asia’s largest and finest hotel

company (Tajgroup.com, 2015).

The IHCL operate different type of hotel to target different type of market

through: Taj (luxury full-service hotels, resorts and palaces), Taj Exotica (resort and

spa brand), Taj Safaris (wildlife lodges), Vivanta by Taj Hotels & Resorts (for the

work-hard-play-hard traveller across metropolitan cities, other commercially

important centres), The Gateway Hotel (upscale/mid-market full service hotels and

resorts) and The Ginger (economy hotels) brand of hotels (Tajgroup.com, 2015).

The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower has a strategic location. It locates beside Taj

Mahal Palace which is the most famous tourist attraction in India. According to

National Geographic (2015), Taj Mahal is one of the most well-known building in the

world because it’s ironic structure and it has artistic and scientific accomplishments

of a wealthy empire. From the annual report of Taj Group in 2013-2014 showed that

Taj Group has total income of 1,929.51 /ten million in 2014 and 1,875.86 /ten million

in 2013.

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3.0 Political Forces

India had experienced the largest democratic implementation in the year of

2014, where 700 to 800 million voters selected their parliamentary representatives to

choose India’s next government.  According to Vaishnav and Patnaik (2014), India’s

new government, selected in a general election by the end of May 2014, are able to

break out of its economic stagnation. The hospitality industry has applauded to the

actions of the new government for the initiatives taken towards improving of tourism

growth including easing of visa restrictions through Electronic Travel Authorization

(ETA).

Minister of State for Civil Aviation has launched the Tourists Visa on Arrival

initiative supported with ETA system. This scheme enables nationals of 43 countries

to travel to India for tourism purposes for 30 days stay (Indian Embassy, 2015).

Moreover, it facilitates prospective travellers to apply and pay visa fee from their

home country online without visiting Indian embassy. As the government objective is

to boost tourism, implementation of TVoA scheme reflects that India is looking

forward to make travel to the country easier (Indian Express, 2015). Therefore,

increase in tourists arrivals is positively bounds the economy of India.

According to Hospitality Biz India (2015), performance of the tourism industry

has improved since the new government came to power, and policy measure like e-

Visa system has brought a long-term change for the tourism industry. Additionally,

ease of tourist entry rules leads to increase in tourist’s arrivals, which will boost the

hotel occupancy rates (Sitaram, 2014). Undoubtedly, the government is serious on

extending the facility and access for more countries. ETA has covered almost 40 per

cent of the source markets; hence after ETA projected expansion the percentage will

go up to 63 percent (Hospitality Biz India, 2015).

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Nevertheless, India will be able to reach the anticipated 14 million inbound

tourists, or 1 percent of the global inbound in the next three years. Thereby, due to

serious measures taken by the government tourism growth has faced significant

increase in 2014 compared to previous years (Appendix 1). Also, new government

is considering legitimate initiatives for the hotel industry, which including

infrastructure status, in order to encourage more investments into the sector.

Furthermore, one of the major implemented programs to improve growth of

tourism is the “Clean India” campaign, launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra

Modi. Currently aspects related to environment cleanliness are burdening the

tourism development, notwithstanding the rich culture of people of India (Amimo,

2014). .In fact, in India 64% of Indians defecate in the open, 60% of all open

defecation issues in the world are in India, 64% of GDP lost in health costs and

reduced tourism revenue (WHO,2010). This campaign is designed to introduce new

biological waste processing methods, build modern sanitation systems and clean

India’s streets as well as public spaces. Newly selected government is riving major

cleaning and sanitation plans in India in order to increase tourist’s arrivals (The

Dollar Business, 2015). Latrines amounting to half a million have been built in homes

under a cleanliness campaign announced by Indian Prime Minister in October, 2014.

Besides, sanitation inspectors will visit local communities and survey household

lavatory use (BBC, 2015).

Nevertheless, new government’s initiatives to ease travelling to India and

cleaning campaigns improved the hotel industry in India, which is enjoying increase

in revenue due to growth in tourist arrivals. In November 2014, Mumbai has

registered more than 15% growth in occupancy rates among hotels (HBI, 2014).

According to Taj Hotels and Resorts Annual Report (2013 – 2014), the Taj Mahal

Palace Hotel’s occupancy growth rate has raised by 2 to 5 percent in the in 2014

year as more tourists came in.

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However, growth in occupancy rates of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel would urge

revenue management team to reconsider their pricing strategy. Pricing strategy

defines as methods, which company uses to price their products and services.

According to Mattila and O’Neil (2003), occupancy is one of the trigger to price

adjustments in the room rates. Consequently, due to limited capacity the hotel will

need to adjust pricing strategy in order to balance supply and demand.

For example: as occupancy has been increased room availability will be

decreased. Therefore, limiting available capacity by changes in pricing strategy can

control the hotel’s capacity. It can be seen that demand is for the Taj Mahal Palace

Hotel has been raised due to government actions to promote tourism in India; hence

hotel’s pricing strategy will consider immediate increase in room rates. This will

facilitate hotel in covering their increased operational expenses. Besides, new

politics had increased flexibility for the investors to invest in India, hence significant

of increase number of tourist and investor had create diversify group. Taj Mahal

identified this impact and started to developed the new segmentation strategy. They

offer variety of product and services just to cater different target market. Hence, its

enable Taj hotel to stay sustainable in the industry.

4.0 Economic Forces

It is assume that in year 2016, India will become one of the world’s

fastest growing major economy and it will surpass China according to International

Monetary Fund (IMF). In year 2014, the outlook for travel and tourism in India were

shown positive with total GDP growth to reach 4.3% (Appendix 2). The causes of this

growth is much being driven by higher consumer spending due to the recession

stage had recovery and enable them to gather pace and became firmly established.

During the long haul travel in year 2014, tourists are expected to spend more per trip

and stay longer on their holidays for example, European markets and it is also

foresee to gain a greater share of international tourism demand (Council, 2015).

6

Inflation rate in India in 2014 had reach 6.37% according to World Statistic

(Appendix 3). The inflation rate of India has been increased over the decade,

however it has been decreased since year 2010. This will slightly affected GDP

growth of the country due to skyrocketing inflation (Travel&Tourism, 2014). Hence,

it’s seems as a profitability for the tourism companies and they started to edge up

and create job employment in the process. Travel and Tourism predicted the industry

in the future ten years will increases in their growth rates of over 4% per annum and

become the higher growth rates compared to other sectors. India economy had been

steady after the election held during year 2014, and with the GDP (Gross profit

domestic) increasing to 7.3% it’s indicates the national debt is decreasing. The

reason for India GDP to sustain is because their economic liberalization since 1991

year and encourage the trades eventually ending with some public monopolies

(Travel&Tourism, 2014).

India’s foreign exchange reserves in year 2014 had a record of US$ 322

billion, it is the highest figure when compared the previous high almost US$ 321

billion in year 2011 September (Appendix 4). Based on latest data, an accretion of

US$ 2.7 billion during January 16, 2015, is due to the increase in foreign currency

assets (Ezell and Atkinson, 2014). Besides, the economy in India shown their

imports growth is faster than the export growth, this indicates India needs to capture

more capital flows to the finance deficit. This large deficit eventually leads to the

depreciation of country currency rates – Rupee in 2012 – 2014. While the large

amount of deficit remains, the will be a fear of further devaluation of the currency and

also it will leads to rise of cost of living among the economy. Thus, India economy

needs to rebalance and put more attention to improve the competitiveness of exports

sectors (Paul, 2013).During the seven-year period through 2013, there is a sharply

growth 150% of the supply of hotel room in India (Khosla, 2014). There is 4.5%

increase supply of hotel room in year 2013 compare to 2012 (Tajhotels.com, 2014).

The Director of hospitality at Cushman & Wakefield India (2014) said, huge market

demand in between 2009 and 2011 is slowly missing. According to the Cushman &

Wakefield report (2014), there are around 52000 new hotel rooms’ supplies;

hospitality sector would be over 65% rise in total hotel inventory by 2017.

7

As demand and supply mismatch and customer cost control, put an enormous

pressure on hotel occupancies and average rate and this has led India hotel 2%

decrease in RevPAR in Indian Hospitality Industry in 2013 (Tajhotels.com, 2014).The

Indian economy slowdown and the sudden increase in capacity had impacted Taj

Mahal to implement the new marketing strategy in order to capture more tourists.

Firstly, according to the director of Taj mahal Rhohit Khosla, they had been through

30 years of tough times and manage to sustain, based on the current economy, Taj

mahal hotel had gone through renovation process and emerged into new looked.

However, due to limited capacity hotel, they only managed to invested 20million USD

dollar in order to reposition one of the budgets hotel Taj Samudra as luxurious hotel.

Besides, Mr Rhohit stated that, consumers that travel to their country in year 2014

tends to spend more and stay longer after been through the recession stage.

Thus, to increase customer loyalty and capture more diversified market, Taj

Mahal hotel had introduced their new café lacttice that upon the arrival of their guest,

they can enjoy their beverages in the lounge. This also enables the Taj mahal hotel

to earn positive word of mouth and allows them to create brand awareness. To

further enhance relationship with the guest, they have implement the new check in

system called ‘sit – down check in’. This system work as the guest can sit on the

desk that prepared in the lobby and it is a one to one interaction (Business Today,

2015). In product wise, Taj hotel had implement new swimming pools, upgraded their

fitness center and create new restaurant to fulfill each categories consumer in order

for them to spend. This is because they understand the spending power of consumer

able to contribute to the local economy.

In term of pricing, Taj hotel segment their own market as luxury business

traveler, hence they need to charge high price to the guest. This is also usually Taj

hotel overhead cost is extremely high, hence in order to make profit, high price is

required to charge to the stay in guest (Business Today, 2015). Taj hotel notice that

the currency of their country is decreasing, hence to attract more foreign tourist to

stay and spend in their hotel, they reaffirms their brand and differential themselves

with competitors in two phases: Literal and metaphorical.

8

This means literal is using calendar campaign includes offline and online

promotion, internal engagement or social media engagement while metaphorical is

using roadshows and joint advertising. With the amount of promotional activities, it’s

manage to grab guest attention and eventually they spend more on their activities

and it also able to meets the Taj hotel objective is that to establish taj hotel is the

preferred vacation and accommodation option in India. This enable Taj hotel tackled

on currency discretion issues (Taj Hotel and Resorts, 2014).

5.0 Technology Forces

Highly raised competition in India’s hotel market has effect on the

performance of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. India represents the cheapest luxury market

(Chopra, 2015). According to HVS (2013) there are 93,000 hotel rooms in India, this

number will be increased to 144,000 rooms by 2018. Furthermore, fast growing

Indian economy is attracting more and more investors and delegates, thereby

creates more demand on accommodation facilities (The Telegraph, 2015). As a

result saturated hotel industry market creates highly competition among hotel

establishments in India.

Nowadays, in order to succeed in competitive hotel industry market in India, it

is no longer enough to provide such facilities as high speed Wi-Fi, room service and

fitness centres. It is vital for the Taj Mahal Palace hotel to examine on current

technological advancements, which enhance hotel’s operations in order to make its

services quick, superior and distinct. The hotel should pay more attention to their

competition capabilities, by comparing and analysing competitive advantages and

disadvantages of their rivals in terms of new products, promotions, prices and

innovations. Nevertheless, it will provide useful inisght into rival’s strengths and

weaknesses, as well reveal new opportunities in their marketplace.

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The latest technological innovation launched in Aloft hotels at the end of 2014,

creates a huge competition to many hotel establishments in India and to Taj Mahal

hotel itself. The new technology represents ‘’ the keyless entry‘’ by using the mobile

phone as a room key. The system allows guests to avoid long registration procedure

and do check-in and out by using their mobile phones and also use it as a room key.

Thereby, these technological innovation gives to Aloft hotels market benefits in terms

of market share. Their customers are viewing this techno as a helpful innovation to

get the fastest access to their rooms. According to Digital, Loyalty & Partnership

Marketing (2014) 80 percent of population will own a mobile phone by 2020.

Consequently, the new implemented technologies are able to deliver fast and

personalized service, thereby gives to Aloft priority to capture more market share.

The new competitors for Taj such as Accor, Carlson Rezidar, Intercontinental,

Hayatt hotel are moving on into new technology. This is because these are well

established company and able to have strong amount of cash flow that enables them

to engage with global network and expanded their businesses to create attractive

loyalty programme. In comparison, Taj Mahal hotel is lack of technological and

innovative equipment. Its loyalty programmes has that are not strong and well-

developed, which may cause customer’s dissatisfaction (Cuckoo, 2013). Moreover,

the hotel charge for using Wi-Fi while Aloft provide free Wi-Fi for all guests. Also, the

highly set prices but the lack of provided facilities are able to influence on Taj Mahal

performance. Otherwise, inability of Taj Mahal to adopt the new technological

innovations and react on the changes in the hotel market will have an influence on its

occupancy rate and overall performance.

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6.0 Recommendations

Hospitality industry in India has emerged as one of the driven factors among

the service sector in India (India Brand Equity Foundation, 2015), and thus attracted

investors to invest on this particular industry by fulfilling the demands of tourist

towards hospitality industry.

The higher number of investors to invest in the hospitality industry in India had

improved the economy of India. In the year from 2000 to 2015 the tourism industry

has attracted around us 7862.08 million. According to India Brand Equity Foundation

(2015), India hospitality industry has grown by 10-15 per cent on the back of better

consumer sentiment with the change of government. However, the boosting of

investors in this industry created the problem of penetration pricing from all these

industry. The higher the competitor in this service industry, the higher the changes of

penetration pricing occur. As it is served as one of the strategy used by firms to

attract more customers to their new products and service from their competitors.

(Investopedia, 2015).

In order to expand the economic engagement, the India government has

promote trade and investment cooperation, bilateral economic in the world economy

to enhance the role of emerging market (Ellings, 2014). Thus, the open of business

and investment brings more hospitality industry opportunist in India. However, it

become one of the challenges to Taj Mahal hotel to be sustain longer in the long run,

as many of the competitors are practicing the price penetration to capture more

market. In order to sustain and be outstanding without lower down the price, Taj

Mahal hotel should practice to be competitive advantages. The Taj Mahal Hotel is

one of the luxury five stars hotels located in New Delhi (Taj Hotels Resorts and

Palace, 2015). One of the way to be competitive advantages is Taj Mahal hotel can

provide some of the unique experience for the guest by providing heritage villa and

environment which is related to the India culture. By providing this uniqueness

experience, it not only increases the brand name of Taj Mahal hotel and also

sustains the long-term competitive advantages for Taj Mahal hotel. Since then,

penetrate pricing from others competitors will no longer be the challenges for Taj

Mahal hotel.

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Others than that, the sanitation issue in India has indirectly affects the tourist

to travel in India (Water and Sanitation Program, 2011). The poor sanitation of India

has affected the economics of India by 6.4 % of it GDP per year (Economy Watch,

2010). One of the recommendations for India to increase the number of tourism to

visit their tourism industry is by having frequent awareness campaign. The

government has organized numerous sanitation of programmed in India however, it

is still not performing well especially in the poor performing states. The government

should organize more effective intervention. For example implementing ‘sanitation as

a business; for household and community toilets and investing in building

entrepreneurial in sanitation sector. Having to say that, Taj Group can also

contributes as a Corporate Social Responsible by conserving the environment and

social responsibility initiatives. Taj Group is currently paying the effort on conserving

the water consumption used in the hotel by recording and reviewing on a regular

basic by ensuring zero water discharge into municipal sewer (India CSR, 2014).

However, to strengthen the effectiveness and awareness from local and international

tourists about the sanitation issues, Taj Mahal hotel should encourage the in house

guest by practicing the environmental conservation such as, waste reduction, water

and energy conservation.

There are few recommendations for India policy maker in order to sustain

their economy in long run. Firstly is look into overarching domestic, Best Public

Policies Practices Council should be establish in order to manage effective economic

growth policies and practices in India’s states which enables to promotes them at the

national level across India. Furthermore, it is suggest that to look into specific

domestic, in this case will be tourism industry. Since unemployment rate in India

remain high, it is suggest to reform their labor market laws in order to generate more

flexible labor market and create more job employment. Based on the current

economy, it should impose good and service tax (GST) that helps to bring stability to

cooperate tax code and sustain in economy. Lastly, in international point of view,

since the current economy is stable now, it should complete the U.S and India

Bilateral Trade and investment Agreement to facilitate foreign direct investment to

country and slow down the depreciation of currency rate. It is suggest that joining the

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international negotiations will helps them to expand product coverage of ITA

(Information Technology Agreement) (Council, 2015)

In technology wise, Taj Mahal Palace Hotel needs to consider competitive

analysis strategies. By analysing competitive intelligence hotel will be enabled to get

competitor’s capabilities and vulnerabilities in such aspects as: technological

advancements, financial strengths, marketing strategies and so on. Moreover,

competitive analysis facilitates in anticipating rival’s actions in the marketplace. This

analysis includes legal methods of identifying competitors and tracking their

activities. For example: firm’s annual reports, websites, analysing competitor’s

customer reviews and so on. Eventually, Taj Mahal hotel will be equipped with

information about new technological advancements, which they can use and adopt in

their business’ operations or even leverage existence technology into new

innovations (Sharma, 2010)

7.0 Conclusion

In the conclusion, one of the most earning and profitable industry in the world

are tourism industry. It employ maximum of labour, contributes to country GDP at the

same time, thus the value of this industry and country is significant. Technology is

one of the issues cannot neglected when come to hospitality industry, and advanced

technology will increase the competitive advantage for the particular industry.

Meanwhile, services also key factor to determine competitive advantage. The

change of politic issues in India had create more opportunity not only in domestic but

also brings them to the new stage. Hence in summary, the external issues in the

country able to impact the hospitality industry.

Nevertheless, Taj Mahal Hotel marketing strategies are impacted by the

forces of external environment, which urge them to consider these influences to be

sustainable in the marketplace and competitive among their rivals.

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9.0 Appendix

1) Foreign Tourist Arrivals to India grew by 5% in Apr- Mar 2014 to 6.95 Million arrivals as compared to 6.62 Million last year.

Source: Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces (2014).

2) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth 2014

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3) Inflation rate in India 2014

4) FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in India 2014 – 2015

19