On the ongoing revamp: The changes visualised are meant to help the group respond to immediate and long-term plans. In a manner of speaking, the timing of the changes by itself, coming at the height of the tourist season, poses a challenge to the organisation but then I believe that it has the resilience and competence to meet the challenge.
On splitting the marketing and sales functions: Marketing and sales are distinct and separate functions in any industry. The marketing group should address strategic long-term issues and translate their inputs into medium- and short-term plans. Typically, issues such as branding, product-segmented market research, and advertising fall within the domain of marketing, while sales should be addressing issues related to meeting sales targets, immediate penetration of existing segments, pricing, discounting issues, and so on.
On the many top-level transfers: Many managers have been in the same position for long, some for decades. The change will, we hope, enable managers to have the opportunity of refreshing themselves in a fresh new challenging setting and to bring new insights into operational challenges. It is now our intention that executives should move after every three to four years in a particular position, and we hope to incorporate this into a regular policy. Of course, we must ensure that hardships on the domestic front in education of children etc are properly managed.
On the brand strategy group: There is considerable need to clearly define the direction in which our hotels are moving in the context of rising competition and global changes. The brand strategy group will evaluate all these trends and recommend development plans. The group focus will be not only on developing advertising, market research etc in traditional marketing areas, but will also embrace food and beverage interventions, leveraging group strengths and factor all this into focused sales.
On the standards committee: The Taj has expanded aggressively in the last few years, and some of our properties are the best in the world. There is, however, a need to standardise excellence across the units. The standards group will focus sharply on benchmarking the best hotels within the group. These will be then benchmarked with the best hotels in the world, and will strive to move towards achieving uniformly high standards in all our hotels.
On new performance appraisal systems:The system we propose to introduce soon will link performance with results obtained, apart from giving importance to development and career growth. The system aims at developing individual potential. We want to instil transparency. No individual whims and fancies. We expect much greater accountability and job satisfaction as a result of this new system.
On business prospects: The hotel industry along with the rest of the Indian economy is currently experiencing a downturn with lower business travel, tourist inflow etc. However, I expect the Taj to do reasonably well in the second half and we are targeting for as good a performance as last year if not better.
