We Are Moving Into Scenic & Adventurous Destinations: Duggal

Charmaine Fernz - Mumbai

Rajiv Duggal

With the Indian outbound scenario looking bright and the numbers graph on an upward scale, SOTC has drawn up their strategies well in advance for the coming season. Explains Rajiv Duggal, senior vice-president, SOTC, "We plan to launch a loyalty club programme somewhere around February, to retain our customers, wherein it would be based on a point system. Our next focus would be to get out of promoting iconic destinations while moving into more scenic and adventurous holidays. We would be focusing on packaging our product right. The evident step would be enhancing our destination offerings. Initially, our focus would be to explore markets such as Russia - St Petersburg and Moscow, Egypt, China and Cairo and further develop destinations within Europe. USA is another destination, which has bounced back. Australia has begun to see increased numbers after the launch of Qantas but the pre-dominant market has been FIT. Even the dual combination of Australia - New Zealand is a success with Indians."

Elaborating on right packaging and product developments, Duggal said, "Looking back at our performance, we have achieved a 50 per cent year on year growth in the last seven years. By 2009, today's top line will certainly be our bottom line. We are stressing a lot on marketing, which help to create the right product. This could be achieved when three to four factors are in place, the first being product development, Here, we focus on our offer of destinations and present our customers value for money offers. This is superceded by customer satisfaction, which is of utmost importance in today's competitive scenario. Second, we need to create a strong gateway. By 2006, our aim is to have a 90 per cent customer satisfaction rate. We are taking this so seriously that we have also involved a lot of international companies to help us provide the right customer services.

"Our next step would be undoubtedly to strengthen our distribution network. Currently, we have an agent network of approximately 4,500 and we would emphasise that our distribution teams across the country focus on quality. We also want to increase our distribution in the NRI markets such as US, UK and Middle-East."

Rounding up the global outbound scenario, Duggal adds, "The most evident trend is the fact that FIT is growing phenomenally and tourism within India will undoubtedly change. Most destinations will prosper due to better airline connections and there would also be a more conscious effort to explore new and unexplored destinations. Last but certainly not the least would be customer satisfaction, which is the primary and most important target for any organisation."