Chennai-based Sterling Holidays Resorts India Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Thomas Cook, will focus on developing adventure and wildlife tourism resorts in India, keeping in line with changing consumer preferences.

Speaking to BusinessLine , Ramesh Ramanathan, Managing Director, Sterling Holidays, said vacations are becoming experience-centric. Earlier, people took a vacation once a year to hill stations and beaches, but now they travel year around to diverse locations.

In order to cater to this changing dynamic, Sterling Holidays will focus on adventure and wildlife tourism. The company forayed into adventure tourism in October 2015 with the acquisition of Nature Trails, which has five resorts in Maharashtra. “With their expertise, we are planning to extend to other resorts as well, in the coming year,” Ramanathan said.

Wildlife is another area that is gaining traction. The company is looking at Aanakatti near Coimbatore as a potential area for development, given its close proximity to Silent Valley, a National Park in the Nilgiris.

Another trend the company is noticing is the time spent in resorts. “Most of the guests spend only 3-4 days at a stretch, unlike a few years ago when time spent ranged from a week to a month,” he said.

The change is driven by the younger crowd, who wish to spend more time at different locations and involve in activities outside the resort. To cater to individual consumer needs, Ramanathan said, the company will launch new activities. “We are planning to introduce cycle trails, which will be launched in Ooty this summer.”

The company, which has 85,000 timeshare members, gets equal business from members and non-members at its resorts. Stating that the company is growing at a CAGR of 30 per cent, Ramanathan said the company will spend ₹100-150 crore for refurbishing existing resorts and launch of new resorts, in 2016-17.

As part of expansion plans, the company will launch two more resorts – Kufri (near Shimla) and Agra — next week, and has plans to open resorts in Goa, Mount Abu and Khanna in Punjab.

Challenges

Though the company wants to expand rapidly, Ramanathan said the long-drawn development process restricts the growth pace. Unavailability of quality staff is another hurdle. “Hospitality is one of the major employment generators, so there is need for a government directive to skill people in this sector.” Sterling Holidays spends about 5-7 per cent of the total revenue in training programmes.

Ramanathan said one of the disadvantages of having a resort in non-metro locations is retention of staff, as many quit to join a hotel or resort within the city.

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