Food festivals spice up business, revenues

Bored of being served the same cuisine at city hotels? Tired of convincing your tastebuds to be satisfied with a limited range of delicacies displayed on the menu?

Well, then it's time you wake up to the real world, for a majority of the hotels in the city are going the whole hog in organising food festivals, bringing to you cuisine not only from geographies within India but also from other countries like Pakistan and Germany. Needless to say, this promotional strategy is bringing in incremental business for the hospitality industry as well.

Says Suprio Banerjee, assistant manager at Mainland China, "From this year onwards, we have set up a calendar for food festivals as compared to earlier years when such events were not a part of our fixed annual agenda."

He adds, "Food festivals do bring in more number of customers and because the food items are priced slightly higher than those on the menu, better revenues are also ensured. But the long-term benefit, in terms of loyalty of customers, is the reason for its popularity."

Mainland China is, at present, organising the Shanghai Street Food Festival.

According to Sanjay Sethi, general manager of Taj Krishna and area director for The Taj Group in Hyderabad, "We organise around eight food festivals in a year with each festival running into approximately 10 days each." This, he adds, is besides the events that the hotel organises during festivals like the New Year and Christmas.

"Besides incremental business of 20 per cent, food festivals ensure that a hotel brings in innovative cuisine from across the world for food connoisseurs. It also increases the competency levels of our in-house chefs as we bring in their counterparts from across the world for this purpose. So it becomes a training ground for them as well," Sethi adds.

He, however, points out that incremental revenues is not what is driving the food festival business. "It's all about customer loyalty. In ordinary circumstances, hotels tend to modify the menus only after 6-8 months. So food festivals help us ensure variety and innovation," Sethi says. Taj Krishna will be organising a Pakistani food festival besides the famed Oktoberfest in the coming months.

ITC Hotel Kakatiya Sheraton and Towers is also pitching in with ethnic cuisine of the Kshatriyas of Andhra in the form of 'Rajula Bhojanam'. Besides, in recent months it also organised 'Call of Cal', which essentially was a traditional Bengali fare.

Says Kuldeep Bhartee, general manager of ITC Hotel Kakatiya Sheraton and Towers, "We organise around two events every month and over the years food festivals have become the focus of our attention."

"Besides helping us to pamper our customers with new cuisine it also promotes in-house research work for our chefs. So there are advantages at both the ends," Bhartee says, adding that food festivals have ensured incremental business of around 25 per cent for the hotel.