‘Upgrading, Repositioning Product Is Top Priority’

Rohit Khosla, the new general manager of Taj President Mumbai, has an ambitious programme for the property, which includes regaining the market share. In an exclusive to Ashish K Tiwari, he reveals his plans...

EH&C: What motivated you to shift from Yemen to Mumbai? How does the Mumbai market look?

ROHIT KHOSLA: I was running a 200-room Taj property at Sana’a in Yemen for the last three years. My tenure there was interesting and it was a great learning experience but business-wise there was not much opportunity to grow, owing to the market conditions there. My two year contract was extended by a year which ended a few months ago. The Taj President Mumbai offer came by and I have been here for just over six weeks now.

Coming to Mumbai and back into mainstream hospitality business is a great feeling. The Mumbai market has developed a lot since my last visit which was almost 20 years ago. With just a handful of players then, Mumbai now boasts of leading national and international hotels, which is a welcome development.

North Mumbai has certainly grown in a big way and I think the South Mumbai market will soon follow suit. I’m quite sure it will be an exciting time here in Mumbai with lots to do.

What have you planned for the hotel?

The banqueting facility at the hotel was relaunched about six months ago. Approximately Rs 5.5 crore has been spent on renovating it with state-of-the-art technology and mood lighting. So that part is taken care of. My area of focus for the hotel will be in the rooms division and, further enhancement of the food and beverage revenue.

Besides, the market positioning of the hotel is an area I’m working on and we’ll soon be in a position to divulge more information on the same. Thus, all efforts will be directed towards upgrading the product, regaining our market share and making it one of the stable market leaders for the years to come. It’s a challenging thing to do but with a strong product by our side, it will be all about channelising the strategies in the right areas at the right time.

Could you elaborate a bit on the product upgrade part you mentioned earlier?

We have refurbished our hotel and the product in its current format is not that bad. But keeping in mind international trends, we need to slightly up the product. Starting next year, we are planning a total renovation of about four to five floors. Thus, going by the average of approximately 100 rooms in a year, in three years we should have a totally new product, accommodation wise.

Changes in the rooms would be in the direction of making them more business friendly as our target customers are mainly business travellers. Making things more functional and offering an enhanced personal touch to the property would be key for any design to be adopted. We have a set of designers who have already submitted their designs. We still have to evaluate them and take a final call on the one to go ahead with.