Skift Take
There’s always space for innovative entrepreneurs to produce whitespace. Kapil Chopra, founder and CEO, believes he’s found some in the high-end store segment with his Postcard Hotel brand name. Look out, Aman, Six Senses, and One & Just.
Leslie Barrie
The Postcard Hotel is a brand name with momentum behind it. It was called Asia’s leading store hotel brand name at the World Travel Awards in 2022. Despite the fact that the India-based brand only released in 2018, it already has 9 homes open, with another 23 under advancement.
When Kapil Chopra, founder and CEO, was looking to invent a high-end hotel brand name, he and his group searched evaluation websites, looking for the greatest hotel-related discomfort points that bugged visitors.
“We studied all the top brand names worldwide, and we said, what are the three things people actually get upset about?” Chopra said.
“Our point of view is that to be constructing the foremost luxury hospitality company of the world needs to come from the land of the Maharajas, it needs to come from India, which’s what our game is,” Chopra said.
His group found that, to name a few things, high-end travelers do not want to fret about what time they need to check into, or have a look at of, their hotel. Nor do they wish to stress about what time the breakfast service ends.
By dealing with these and other issues, The Postcard Hotel has taken a systematic technique to client service.
The momentum is palpable. However at this speed, can they keep up the service that’s offered them their early distinctions?
Drafting the Postcard Brand
Before releasing his brand name, Chopra was the president of Oberoi hotels in India for over 5 years, and at that time discovered that three brand names were leading the luxury leisure travel space: Aman, 6 Senses, and One & Only.
“I saw these three chains as possibly the only guys doing what I call ‘transformative travel,’ which is beyond experiential,” Chopra said. “It’s travel that sticks with you a lot longer after you have actually left the hotel.”
Still, he saw a problem with each of these significant transformative travel business.
“I was looking at them extremely thoroughly,” Chopra stated. “The typical element with these brands was that the founders had lost control of the brands they produced, which was substantial.”
Whether they were sold or had brand-new management, the 3 key gamers no longer had the creator’s touch, which Chopra thinks is essential to creating a special, forward-thinking luxury brand name. This, Chopra thought, was a gap he might fill.
He also discovered a modification in the type of visitors remaining at certain Oberoi hotels. In the early 2000s at the Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, occupancy consisted of 8 percent of tourists from India and 92 percent of immigrants. By 2018, he saw a significant shift, with 52 percent of tenancy made up of travelers from India and a mere 48 percent foreigners.
“So, suddenly in India, which had now end up being a slightly richer nation, people no longer felt guilty about spending on getaway travel, even at very high rates,” Chopra said.
The combination of more spending on domestic luxury vacations and visitors wanting a hotel brand name with an owner’s viewpoint assisted Chopra discover this high-end specific niche.
“It was a very clear sign in the market that India was prepared for a high-end hospitality brand rooted out of India that was personality-led,” Chopra said.
< img width="1024"height ="684"alt =""data-src ="https://skift.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/The-Postcard-Dewa-Thimphu-22-1024x684.jpg"src =" image/gif; base64, R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw = ="/ > A reception location at The Postcard Dewa, with views of the Khasadrapchu Valley in Bhutan. Source: The Postcard Hotel.
Putting a Stamp on the Brand
Chopra has produced a blueprint for The Postcard Hotel that’s clicked with visitors and has permitted him to charge high room rates (their new hotel, The Postcard on the Arabian Sea in Karnataka, averages $700 a night, he said, while others in the area charge around $70).
Initially, it’s the area. The Postcard Hotel looks for destinations with either no, or not too many, competitors. They were the first to do a luxury home in Gujarat at the Gir Wildlife Sanctuary (so visitors might get up close and personal with the Asiatic lions). They’ll likewise be the first home to open in the northeast state of Assam, The Postcard in the Durrung Estate, with 12 rooms on top of tea gardens.
Due To The Fact That The Postcard Hotel has an emphasis on leisure travel, Chopra is skipping huge city destinations (in the meantime) and only picking a location if it’s a seaside town, in the mountains, at a wildlife reserve, in a historic palace, or in a wine or whisky states (he’s open to the concept of say, a future Postcard Hotel in the Champagne region of France).
“In these five cases, the story of the location is bigger than the story of the hotel, and isn’t that what travel has to do with?” stated Chopra. “Our point of view, when you think about a leisure category, is we require to be there, and we require to be there internationally.”
Chopra also ensures, naturally, that there are lots of regional, transformative experiences. For example, guests at the Assam residential or commercial property will be able to gather their own tea, put it through the drying process, and load the tea to take it home. Then, The Postcard Hotel has a tea subscription service, so you have fresh tea each month.
“That’s transformative travel– long after you’ve gone, I’m still able to touch your soul,” stated Chopra.
As part of The Postcard Hotel formula, Chopra is also going to great lengths to avoid the crucial pain points that bother high-end travelers.
“Individuals do not like to be told when to sign in and check out,” stated Chopra. “At the highest end of the market, people are making billion-dollar decisions in their everyday lives, so they do not require to be informed like schoolchildren, check in at 2 p.m. and have a look at 10 a.m.”
Also, he discovered that individuals on holiday don’t want to be informed when to have breakfast which numerous high-end travelers don’t like when alcohol markups are too expensive.
So guests at a Postcard Hotel can check in and check out at any time of the day without being charged additional. Guests can also have breakfast at any time. The food promises to be genuine and regional, prepared with the regional spices distinct to that location (so you won’t discover a basket of croissants remaining). When it comes to the alcohol?
“The local alcoholic beverages will likewise be from the area, and when you sign in to the hotel, to ensure your mind is not burdened, you can have as many as you desire,” said Chopra. In Goa, for example, visitors are served cocktails with feni, the regional alcohol distilled from cashews.
When it comes to his hotels’ styles, Chopra tries to utilize local, sustainable products whenever possible, bring back buildings with heritage, and incorporate local design components to avoid a copy-paste impact.
“In the high-end resort hospitality area, very little innovation has occurred, other than restrooms have grown and bigger,” said Chopra. “You can pick up a room from Goa and put it in Singapore and Singapore back into Goa, and individuals wouldn’t understand the distinction.”
Sending out a Message
While many beginners in the hospitality space were hit hard during the pandemic, The Postcard Hotel discovered itself at the best location at the correct time.
The brand name keeps its properties small. No hotel is over 60 rooms, so service remains extremely individualized. Since travelers didn’t want to remain at bigger homes throughout the pandemic, The Postcard Hotel came out ahead and ran full after the very first lockdown, with revenues growing 55 percent year-over-year.
Its greatest win, though? Covid required domestic travel.
“The most important people in India and the wealthiest individuals in India could not travel outside of India, so they were forced to come and experience The Postcard hospitality in a manner,” said Chopra. “Everybody on the arrival list was basically India’s who’s who.”
Due to the fact that those important visitors shared their experiences on social media, it raised brand name awareness– gathering it more PR and visibility than it would have gotten if there had actually been no pandemic.
Now, The Postcard Hotel has locations not only in India but likewise in Sri Lanka and Bhutan and is all set to broaden even more, whether that’s in Austria or Africa.
“I understood that India had a huge enough domestic market to support an incredibly luxury brand that starts from India and takes control of the world,” said Chopra. The Postcard Hotel, he hopes, will deliver on that hunch.