50 percent of our revenue comes from social events: Rajiv Kapoor, GM, Fairmont Jaipur

Having taken over as the new General Manager of Fairmont Jaipur, the country’s favourite destination for corporate and social events, Rajiv Kapoor spoke to BW Applause and Everything Experiential about his new role, his vision for this exotic property and more.

Excerpts:

How important are social and corporate events and what is their revenue share?

When I talk about our hotel, 50 per cent of our revenue comes from the social events and 20 percent comes from MICE events.

 Jaipur has so much culture to offer. Just 15 minutes away from our hotel, all the beautiful forts are located which offer unique experiences for customer’s.

Within our property, we also focus a lot on detailing and personalization.  We also get a lot of honeymooners into the hotel and a lot of families on weekend getaways.

What has been the impact of recent tax cut on luxury hotels?

I really congratulate the government for taking the step. It's a great step taken for boosting the overall tourism across the country. 

The dominant perception in our country is that since our taxes are high, a lot of domestic customers prefer to visit locations abroad. They go to Bangkok, Malaysia and other Eastern countries because they find them more economical. 

So one of the advantages now will be that domestic tourists can be retained apart from attracting international clients.

You partner with a lot of IP’s too, what are the factors that you consider before partnering?

It all about the values that the brand stands for. Like I said, we are all about turning moments into memories. I'll give you example of India Music Summit which we started together three years ago.

We didn't want to follow what was existing. We wanted to get into  a partnership and create a summit which the whole country would admire.

So if you see over the last three years, we both have learned a lot. The MTV Raymond India Music Summit together with Fairmont Jaipur, is now an established IP which everybody knows about across the country. 

As we step into the wedding season , how is the response so far?

We are very excited about the season. And most of our weddings are booked a year or two in advance. So we are totally blocked for the season and we are now working on 2020 and 2021 weddings. 

What are some of the bigger challenges facing the hospitality players in India?

We need to portray our country as the safest tourism destination, this will increase the inflow of international tourists manifold.

Also, connectivity is very important. I think so there are a lot of steps being taken by the government in that direction throughout the country. 

Getting the right talent and retaining it is another big challenge and we are grooming new talent internally too.

I think that these are the biggest challenges which need to be addressed.