With its stunning white-sand beaches and clear turquoise waters, the Cancun Hotel Zone has been a vacation hotspot for decades.
25.08.2023 - 13:53 / skift.com / Leslie Barrie
The Postcard Hotel is a brand with momentum behind it. It was named Asia’s leading boutique hotel brand at the World Travel Awards in 2022. Even though the India-based brand only launched in 2018, it already has nine properties open, with another 23 under development.
When Kapil Chopra, founder and CEO, was looking to invent a luxury hotel brand, he and his team scoured review sites, searching for the biggest hotel-related pain points that irked guests.
“We studied all the top brands in the world, and we said, what are the three things people really get upset about?” Chopra said.
“Our point of view is that to be building the foremost luxury hospitality company of the world needs to come from the land of the Maharajas, it needs to come from India, and that’s what our game is,” Chopra said.
His team discovered that, among other things, luxury travelers don’t want to worry about what time they need to check into, or check out of, their hotel. Nor do they want to stress about what time the breakfast service ends.
By addressing these and other problems, The Postcard Hotel has taken a systematic approach to customer service.
The momentum is palpable. But at this pace, can they keep up the service that’s provided them their early accolades?
Before launching his brand, Chopra was the president of Oberoi hotels in India for over five years, and at that time noticed that three brands were leading the luxury leisure travel space: Aman, Six Senses, and One&Only.
“I saw these three chains as maybe the only guys doing what I call ‘transformative travel,’ which is beyond experiential,” Chopra said. “It’s travel that stays with you much longer after you’ve left the hotel.”
Still, he saw a problem with each of these major transformative travel companies.
“I was looking at them very carefully,” Chopra said. “The common factor with these brands was that the founders had lost control of the brands they created, which was huge.”
Whether they were sold or had new management, the three key players no longer had the founder’s touch, which Chopra believes is crucial to creating a unique, forward-thinking luxury brand. This, Chopra thought, was a gap he could fill.
He also noticed a change in the type of guests staying at certain Oberoi hotels. In the early 2000s at the Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, occupancy comprised 8 percent of travelers from India and 92 percent of foreigners. By 2018, he saw a major shift, with 52 percent of occupancy made up of travelers from India and a mere 48 percent foreigners.
“So, suddenly in India, which had now become a slightly richer country, people no longer felt guilty about spending on vacation travel, even at very high rates,” Chopra said.
The combination of more spending on domestic luxury
With its stunning white-sand beaches and clear turquoise waters, the Cancun Hotel Zone has been a vacation hotspot for decades.
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