The airport hospitality industry currently stands at around 250 million passengers, as compared to 190 million passengers last year. This passenger count has been shooting up exponentially over the last couple of years, and it's expected to grow even more, in the future. India had around 50 airports a decade back. Today the country has 114 airports, which will go up to 240 airports very soon.
Last year, the overall passenger count grew by 8.83 per cent. A few of the airports grew by 40 per cent, for example, Goa. That was obviously because it was a new airport which just came into being. The growth had to be higher. But a busier airport like Delhi, grew out by 8 per cent plus, which brings pace to the country because this is the busiest airport - hoping to cross probably 100 million by this year's end, or perhaps by next mid-year for sure.
Encalm Hospitality, founded in 2021, specialises in crafting and delivering experiences within the realm of airport hospitality. Delivering a spectrum of offerings including VIP lounges (Encalm Lounge), airport meet and greet services (Atithya), spa services (Encalm Spa), premium business lounges (Encalm Privé), luggage wrapping services (EnWrap) and airport hotels (Transit by Encalm), Encalm is dedicated to enhancing non-aviation avenues across airports.
The total passenger traffic steps in with a 50-50 division toward F&B retail and Encalm Lounges, respectively. With a seating arrangement of about 200, the influx of passengers at Encalm Hospitality’s lounge area is divided into the utilisation of lounge and F&B services.
In an exclusive chat with Everything Experiential, hospitality veteran, Vikas Sharma, CEO, Encalm Hospitality speaks about launching Encalm after a successful two-and-a-half-decade career in the hospitality biz, its association with various sports IPs, the focus on premium experiences offered at airports through various services, and more.
Edited excerpts:
You started Encalm Hospitality in 2021 after a career spanning two and a half decades with other hospitality brands – what drove you to launch Encalm Hospitality, and how do you plan to change the industry game?
I worked in hotels for two and a half decades, almost 25 years. I started my career in 1997, and grew up with leading chains in the world. So, the hospitality was ingrained. Every bit of me screamed of hospitality in every town. And I was a food and beverage guy, I started from the very base, and I reached the general manager level.
And then the thought which came was, what next? I loved hotels very much to leave them behind. And so this opportunity came my way, wherein promoters, wanted to do something big by getting in hospitality and amalgamating it with my experience of travel.
There is a thought that there's always a home wherein somebody takes care of you at home or in a hotel. So there's a hotel which is taking care of you. And then once you get into the flight, there are hostesses and they take care of you, right? But there's no one in between.
And when it comes to spending most of the time at the airport, that's where we wanted to create the dent - we wanted to ensure that it's just not about being transactional, but a little more experiential.
And that's the vision I created that – with the thought that let's make airports more liveable, a little more personal for everything. And that precisely remains our vision.
And that's what we did, because I think if you have a clear vision, like in childhood, we always knew that if you have a name in mind, if you don't have a name in mind, your boat is like a rudderless boat. Right? And so that's something which we did when we started.
From your experience in hotels and now in airport hospitality. What is it like to act as a bridge between the two?
The owners of our company chose me because they wanted to bridge the gap. As you said, it's the airport and it's the hotels. Why can't the hospitality of hotels come to the airport? The idea was to bridge that gap.
My earlier years were all in food and beverage, and 80% of the business of what we do is food and beverage. And we have opened spas as well because I was running spas while I was in the hotel business.
We are also opening hotels now. It's called Transit by Encalm – and we launched it in Hyderabad. We are opening 16 rooms of Transit by Encalm in Delhi as well.
We're also opening a big hotel in Goa - 220 rooms at the Goa airport. So the idea is to be complete hospitality solutions at the end.
We are also doing lounges – as the Encalm Lounge. We are doing our meet and greet service, called ‘Atithya’ which has got great brand value - that's where we started, and it was our first service. We started that and then we moved on to lounges and beyond.
We also do baggage wrapping with EnWrap. Encalm Spa is also big.
We have also opened up a business class lounge at T3 called Encalm Privé - we started it last July. I've been to a couple of lounges around the world, which are of really high standard, but I think ours is also up there. And the whole idea is to up the hospitality game at the airport.
We are coming up with a concept of a CIP lounge, which is already available in Goa. We are coming up with one in Delhi as well. The whole idea behind CIP lounges is that you do not need to go to the terminal – because the lounge itself is a terminal. You don't need to go through the whole security check line and immigration. None of it at all. Everything happens in that lounge and you’re good to go.
It's quite easy calling it CIP which stands for commercially important person, and is part of the terminology that is used at the airport. We'll obviously come up with a good, special name sometime soon - it would be more like a club than anything else because it would not be easy to get in there. One would have to kind of earn to get into that place.
A lot of brands are coming on board to associate themselves with sports properties such as the IPL, World Cup, Kabaddi League, Olympics etc. How do you view the transformation of this space? And as a three-year-old brand, what has been your objective of associating with sports events?
I feel that sports and travel are interconnected in today's world. The more you play, the more you travel and the more places you go to. And that's what the primary reason was for us to associate with sports. And it's not only cricket, we were also associated with the Kabaddi League – this year and last year too.
This is our first time association with cricket – wherein we tied up with Delhi Capitals as their Hospitality Partner for IPL 2024. We have already tied up with them for three years - this year and for the next two years as well.
Sports and travel go hand in hand. You know, people do travel. And viewership of sports is always very high, always. That's where we went on with sports.
Kabaddi, is our Indian sport which is getting popular. And cricket, too, is a very popular worldwide sport.
Kabaddi is growing, and travelling and viewership is growing. Kabaddi League is growing, even if it's at a gradual pace, but it is growing and it's gaining recognition. And that's what the whole idea was.
And for us, all this was very expensive to start with. But we have to start somewhere. So, at that time, we did start with kabaddi. But again, it’s become quite expensive as the popularity is increasing.
With sports coming into play, this also gives us an opportunity to take our top clients to watch a cricket match - currently, we are not in a position to do so, but that's an experiential thing which we want to do in future. The idea is to create those experiences and then take you through those experiences.
In terms of what this partnership entails, is that while the team travels, all the players come to our lounges - they have access to the place, and they get access to our lounges. As of now, there is no direct/indirect involvement with the consumers. But we do intend to create some kind of interaction between the team players and the consumers - probably getting them to interact at an Encalm preview or something like that.
Encalm Hospitality focuses on creating experiences specifically in the non-aviation avenues across the airport hospitality space. Why did you choose such a niche focus, when the consumer experiences sector is booming in other areas of hospitality as well?
We are open to everything, and we will not hold ourselves back. We wouldn’t want to limit our vision to airport hospitality - we want to be the world's best hospitality company. But we are focusing currently on airports. And within the airports also.
We had to start with something. So, we started with what we are doing currently. We are gradually expanding. Tomorrow you might see us in F&B Retail or other possibilities too, and why not? Wherever we see growth in business, we would love to put our foot in there. In three years, you have already, you know, as you've spoken about also, I read your company profile, also brand profile.
In three years, Encalm already delivered a spectrum of offerings including VIP lounges, airport meet and greet services, spa services, business lounges, luggage wrapping services and airport hotels. What are the other services and experiences that Encalm is looking at expanding into and providing to its customers?
Our current plan is to expand into other airports - that's our first plan and then, to go international, as well. So, right now we are focusing on lounges.
We are focusing big time on our Atithya services and Encalm Spas. We want to ensure that we grow these because this is just the beginning for us. We have three airports. We want to grow more. We want to be available in more airports within India and of course, going outside India as well. So next three to four years, that's the expansion plan that is on the way.
There are two to three really big things. One is duty-free, which we can't get into. That's proper hardcore retail. We don't want to get into that. F&B retail could be an area of expansion for us because that's another big thing at the airport because we want to look at food and beverage and hospitality.
We are already getting into a few other things as well. For example, in our business class lounge, we already have AR-VR gaming. So, if there's an opportunity, we might consider getting into AR-VR stores within the airport. But again, that depends upon what is the customer’s take on that, and if people would appreciate it. And if there is a demand, we will look at various kinds of businesses for sure.
In terms of our international foray, we are currently focusing on the Middle East and even in Southeast Asia – so, basically Southeast Asia, Dubai, UAE, and an opportunity even in Thailand or Indonesia, Malaysia, or elsewhere.
So, our first focus would be to take or count to five more airports in India within this year, as well as one international airport, hopefully. To apply for an international airport, one needs a minimum experience of three years, and we will complete three years by January next year.
