Radisson Hotel Group: A Global Hospitality Player

Radisson Hotel Group is one of the world’s largest hotel groups with seven distinctive hotel brands, and more than 1,400 hotels in operation and under development around the world. Radisson Hotel Group portfolio includes Radisson Collection, Radisson Blu, Radisson, Radisson RED, Park Plaza, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inn & Suites by Radisson.

Our India Story: Over Two Decades of Hospitality

Radisson Hotel Group made its entry into India in 1998, as Carlson Rezidor Group, with the establishment of its first Radisson Blu hotel in New Delhi. We currently operate five global brands in India vis-à-vis Radisson Blu, Park Plaza, Radisson, Park Inn by Radisson and Country Inn & Suites by Radisson. With 94 hotels across South Asia and over 50 under development, we enjoy a widespread network across almost 60 cities in the country.

We collectively signed 18 new hotels in 2019 and Q1 of 2020 maintaining our foothold as the fastest growing hotel brand in the country, while we opened new hotels in locations like Agra, and Delhi NCR during this period. The company is on track to open hotels at various leisure and commercial destinations like Mumbai, Mohali, Gwalior, Dharamshala, Kufri, Bareilly, Bhopal, Nasik and Rewa in the upcoming months. Also, amongst our new hotel openings slated for 2020, is the introduction of Radisson RED, which is expected to usher in an exciting new era of contemporary, creative hospitality to India.

Our Business Strategy: India Unification Plan

At Radisson Hotel Group, our business strategy – referred to as ‘India Unification Plan’, revolves around leveraging the strength of our distribution network. This has been achieved by ‘clustering’ of resources to unify our network, unlock synergies, optimise cost and enhance efficiency. India Unification Strategy is premised on five critical areas: People, Procurement, Food & Beverage (F&B), Operations and Commercial.

Driving a Culture of Excellence and Collaboration

Radisson Hotel Group’s footprint in India is over two decades old which have been solidly invested in developing a deep understanding of the Indian market, guests and their needs. Our vision is firmly anchored around driving value for the owners, guests and employees. We place our stakeholder relationships at the heart of our operations and believe in raising the bar each time an investor approaches us, a guest walks through our doors or an employee joins our workforce.

Our company’s strategic direction has therefore, been under pinned by a strong focus on new ways of working and an uncompromising focus on collaboration and ‘One team’ mindset. We encourage an excellence-driven mindset across our corporate office and hotels. Our General Managers’ selection process is intensive and well-structured with less than 10% of the total applicants being hired. We have made concerted efforts in mentoring our General Managers to adopt a distinctive work environment, spearhead innovative thinking, manage resources productively, direct people development and deployment process, build a dynamic organization, and oversee day-to-day operations with a KPI-driven mindset.

Key Initiatives:

Cross-Selling Incentive Program

Cross-Selling Incentive Program is designed to leverage close to 500 hotel sales resources across India in order to optimally capture the growing Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Events (MICE) market. The program was introduced as a pilot in 2019 and registered bookings for over 21,000 room nights. This game changing initiative has now been rolled out pan India and is available across 89 hotels in 43 cities.

Centralised Procurement

Through our clustering approach, we delivered a centralised procurement solution generating cost savings on 100+ items across 50+ participating hotels. The program covers items like Furniture, Fixtures & Equipment, Operating Supplies & Equipment, Consumables, Food & Drinks and Services and extends benefits on a pan-India basis, regional cluster-basis and citybasis.

Manpower Clustering

Six robust clusters have been identified across our portfolio to be led by cluster General Managers who are accountable for performance of their respective clusters through monthly performance reviews with hotel and corporate office.

Centre of Excellence

To uplift performance and promote healthy internal competition, ‘Center of Excellence’ (COE) – a performance measurement initiative to evaluate hotels across a set of pre-identified metrics was launched in April. COE is set up to measure performance across our managed and franchised portfolio on 12 and 9 metrics respectively including Revenue, Gross Operating Profit, Accounts payable/Accounts receivable, Brand quality index, RevPAR + Revenue Generation Index (RGI), System Contribution and Loyalty Program Enrolments

Food and Beverage (F&B) Uplift

We are focused on augmenting this space and a series of steps have been taken vis-à-vis an exclusive Master Franchise Agreement (MFA) with Tapas Club, a popular Singapore-based F&D brand was announced to roll out a series of stylish Spanish restaurants across our extensive portfolio of hotels in India. Bespoke programs were introduced such as Radisson Hotel Group Cook Off – to promote culinary talent across the Group; Take Home a Chef – to offer delightful F&B options for home parties; and Ghar ka Swaad – to boost in-room F&B business respectively.

Talent development

Radisson Future Leaders program is a Career Development Program designed to groom Management Associates (MAs). The duration of this program is 18 months and the entire program has been spread across three phases with a structured review process at the end of every phase. The recruitment parameters under this program are extremely robust and stringent where the company registered less than 0.1% selection rate in 2019, tapping only the crème de la crème.

Brand Uplift and Guest Experience

We have implemented a series of focused efforts to ensure our brand standards are globally consistent and firmly reflective of our vision. We introduced stringent brand compliance parameters this year and have brought in a bulk of our portfolio under review. Guest experience was enhanced, and we clocked 100% response rate with an average closure time of 4-5 days for guest complaints.

Technology

We introduced EMMA – our exclusive new unified technology platform globally. EMMA brings transformational benefits that will drive guest loyalty, improve revenue generation, operational execution and provide a 360-degree customer experience. India will be piloting the launch of EMMA in 2020 with a focus on launching our new hotels on this platform.

Onwards and Upwards!

Having laid strong groundwork for achieving excellence through revitalized operations, we are committed to drive the momentum forward in 2020.

Our go-forward strategy is based on driving Gross Operating Profit through a ‘Focus-40’ action plan. This will be achieved by implementing a flow through management plan for hotels; expanding clustering exercise to areas such as marketing and sales and instituting subject matter experts; effecting a thorough manning exercise for all hotels and further streamlining effectiveness of Centre of Excellence.

With a unique business strategy, renewed team and leadership placing excellence and culture uplift at the core, Radisson Hotel group is well poised for transformative growth in the coming years. Our differentiating advantage is the trust and relationships we have with our owners, guests and employees which is manifested through their repeat choice of our brand. Fostering a new outlook at Radisson Hotel Group, we believe it’s time to ‘change gears’ and usher in a new era!