Co's main focus will remain on India: Mahindra Holidays

Despite the slowdown, Mahindra Holidays has nearly doubled its room capacity in the last couple of years, says CEO Rajiv Sawhney. Talking to CNBC-TV18, he says that the company has expanded aggressively as it believes holidaying is here to stay because of sociological and psychological reasons.

He says that the company’s primary focus is on and will remain on India. On the international front, as the low-cost carriers bring neighbouring countries economically closer to India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Thailand and Dubai are places which the company will be looking at as prospective destinations for its business. Below is the verbatim transcript of his interview with CNBC-TV18 Q: Your company has added significant capacity in the last one year. Can you explain what is the overall capacity you have planned in the next few years? A: At Mahindra Holidays, we have added a significant number of rooms in the last two years, more than 1,000 in two years. We have pretty much doubled our room availability. We have added new destinations. We have put places like Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, and Kandaghat in Himachal on the tourist map. We have now got six resorts in Kerala, and two large ones in Goa. We have gone overseas. We now have a resort in Bangkok and in Dubai, places which are cheaper to travel to than India. Places where we are now able to give them an experience like no other. It is a place where people are more familiar with.  That is what we have been up to. Q: Company has seen a fair bit of expansion in the international market. Going forward, can you elaborate which locations you will be looking at and where are you present? A: Our primary focus remains and will remain India. On the international side, as the low-cost carriers bring neighbouring countries economically closer to India, places like Sri Lanka, Malaysia in addition to Thailand and Dubai are places which we believe interest our members. Places where you can go for a family holiday, the visa regime is easy and the total cost of holiday is affordable. So these are the places of interest to us as Club Mahindra. As the Indian tourists evolve over years, as they start going in high velocity to other countries we would look at that at appropriate time, but for now this is what we are looking at. Q: What is your rationale behind these aggressive expansions? We get constant commentary about the slowdown in discretionary spending. A: Let us breakdown your question. Firstly for the middle class and the upper middle class who are in service, their increment may have been pruned just that marginal bit. The bottom line is that the discretionary income has not dropped. Holidaying is something which is there to stay because of sociological reasons, because of psychological reasons, because of the stress that people are going through, the hard work that they are putting in today. They owe themselves a break. They owe themselves a holiday and the family influence is strong enough. Holidaying is something which is there to stay. The product category that we are in timeshare people are committing today for the future. So it has nothing to do with what is happening today, this year or next year. It is for the longer term. Longer term everybody in India continues to be both optimistic and positive.