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<\/i>Sharleen Dsouza, Bloomberg Quint <\/i><\/p>\n <\/i>Sharleen Dsouza, Bloomberg Quint <\/i><\/p>\n
Sharleen Dsouza, Bloomberg Quint Mumbai, 10 February 2017 Less than seven years after launching the Vivanta brand and four years after inaugurating its first Gateway property, Indian Hotels Co Ltd. has decided to re-brand the two verticals and bring them back under the Taj Group brand. All existing properties run by the Taj Group will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-quotes"],"yoast_head":"\nMumbai, 10 February 2017<\/i><\/p>\n<\/span>\n![\"\"](\"..\/images\/taj-hotels-mumbai.jpg\")
Less\nthan seven years after launching the Vivanta brand and four years after\ninaugurating its first Gateway property, Indian Hotels Co Ltd. has\ndecided to re-brand the two verticals and bring them back under the Taj\nGroup brand.
All existing properties run by the Taj Group will\nnow be classified under four categories — Taj Hotels, Taj Palaces, Taj\nResorts and Taj Safari. Only its budget chain, Ginger Hotels, will\ncontinue to be operated under the existing brand.
Analysts and\nbrand consultants maintain that this entire exercise will have no\nimpact on the company’s performance in the near term. They peg the\nbenefit of reclassification seeping in only after five years, if at all.
Consultants\nalso argue that the rebranding exercise by the hotel major won’t do\nmuch to change the perception in the mind of the consumer, which has\nbeen dented due to a drop in service quality.
Devangshu\nDutta, chief executive officer at Third Eyesight, a retail and brand\nconsultancy firm, is not so critical of the new strategy stating that\nthe new branding will help Taj classify its properties better and build\nmarket share over a period of time.<\/span>
Brokerage\nhouse IIFL Ltd. says Indian Hotels’ long-term strategy is to chase\nprofitability over a period of time. “The earlier positioning didn’t do\nmuch for the consumer. There was a sense of ambiguity in the minds of\nthe consumer with the earlier classification of hotels. It is very\nclear that the company is now looking to improve its bottom line,”\naccording to Amar Ambani, Head Of Research At IIFL Ltd.
The rebranding will be complete by the end of 2017, the company said.
Chinami\nSharma, chief revenue officer of Taj Hotels, Palaces, Resorts, and\nSafaris, said the company will spend not more than three to four\npercent of its revenue on the rebranding exercise.
Indian\nHotels’ consolidated revenue in the quarter ended December stood at Rs\n1,129.29 crore, down 2.8 percent year-on-year compared to Rs 1,162.19\ncrore. Its net profit rose to Rs 93 crore compared to Rs 13 crore in\nthe year-ago period.
The reclassification of hotels will not have an impact on the pricing strategy of the Taj Hotels properties, the company said.
\n<\/span>(Published\nin BloombergQuint<\/a>)<\/i>\n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"