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R.Y. Narayanan

COIMBATORE, Feb. 14

EVEN as the shake-out in the holiday time share industry seems to be nearly over, Club Mahindra Holidays is planning to expand its reach to newer locations.

The company, which is now focussed on acquiring properties in hill stations and beach resorts, is keen on heritage tourism as well, but a foray into this may have to wait for a while.

Mr. R. Radhakrishna, Chief Sales Officer, Club Mahindra Holidays, Chennai, told Business Line here that the time share business in the country was in `a very bad shape' for the past four or five years with a lot of `fly-by-night operators' pitching tent.

But now all the "chaff has gone, and the real cream is left," he claims. There were only one or two good players and the brand image of the Mahindra group helped the company gain the trust and confidence of customers and withstand the turbulence in the industry, he added.

Mr. Radhakrishna said in the last one year, his company had registered more than 60-per cent growth compared to the earlier year. The acquisition of new members for time-share, which was earlier around 2,000 per year, would more than double to 4,000-5,000 members in the current year. The present membership was around 14,000.

Apart from membership expansion, Club Mahindra Holidays was also planning to add more properties. Its existing two are at Munnar and Goa. The new locations are Mussourie and Binsar at the foot of the Himalayas in UP. The company was also looking at new locations in the South, West and North India so that by 2004-05, it had two more time share locations.

He said his company's idea was to make holidaying a part of life for people. It was not mere time shares that it wanted to market. It wanted to impress the people that de-stressing and bonding were necessary and vacationing with family was the way to achieve it.

He said his company has invested about Rs 70-80 crore in the two projects completed and it would be spending another Rs 20 crore in the proposed Mussourie and Binsar timeshare properties.

Mr. Radhakrishna said now the tourism industry and the government were becoming aware of the need to give a push to inland tourism. The company was approaching the governments in Kashmir and Uttranchal to give land for putting up time share properties as part of efforts to promote inland tourism.

Mahindra has tied up with HDFC Bank to help finance those intending to purchase time shares from Club Mahindra and this tie-up was providing about 20-25 per cent of the business.

Answering a question at to whether the company had not increased the time share rates, he said the increase was only 10-15 per cent. The time share price was Rs 85,000 to begin with and the highest rate was about Rs 5 lakh. This varied depending on the type of accommodation and the season.

He said governments should adopt a friendly attitude towards genuine time share promoters and relax rules to give a boost to inland tourism. They should also evolve a regulatory framework so as to give credibility to the industry.

In a bid to reach out to customers in more cities, Club Mahindra Holidays has decided to appoint channel partners. In Coimbatore, Club Mahindra has tied-up with Pricol Travels belonging to Premier Instruments and Controls, which was the first corporate entity with which Club Mahindra entered into an agreement to promote its timeshare business in the country.

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