SPEAKER TWO

1. Novotel Queenstown Lakeside - The Indian Market - A case study of identifying a gap and building an emerging market to support overall business performance SPEAKER TWO TNZ have India as the fastest growing emerging market for New Zealand yes many of the figures quoted by RTOs and TNZ miss reporting on India’s numbers. The market is however growing despite no direct flights INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

2. Independent Professionals make up 55% of the holiday visitors INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION A large peak occurs in May - occurring at a holiday time and the coming of the Monsoon in India - very hot and often wet. This coincides with a shoulder/low season in most New Zealand tourism destinations

3. Holiday seasonality works for Queenstown and for New Zealand with large amounts of travellers in Autumn a traditionally slower time. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

4. 2008 Hotel Vs Market performance1241 room nights from India - approx. 10% of hotel occupancy in MayYear end occupancy Market 65.4% Hotel 66.1% INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

5. 2013 Hotel Vs Market performance4122 room nights from India - approx. 20% of hotel occupancy in MayYear end occupancy Market 66.6% Hotel 83% INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

6. 2018 Hotel Vs Market performance9742 room nights from India - approx. 38% of hotel occupancy in MayYear end occupancy Market 82.3% Hotel 88.9% INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

7. Novotel Queenstown Lakeside History 2008- 2018 In 2018 the Hotel relaunched after a major refurbishment - the market was achieving only 65% occupancy year around and had distinct seasonality issues with May and June achieving 45 and 37% occupancy respectively. As the new General Manager of the Hotel and with high expectations we looked at what markets could potentially be tapped to improve the position of the Hotel without impacting on the traditional business that we had. We looked further at the Indian market which had started to come to Auckland and other regions but which the hotel had not really accommodated in the past. The following figures demonstrate how this business has impacted on the overall success of the Hotel and why the Indian market has become such an important market to us INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

8. Group market we started by targeting the groups that had started visiting Auckland and Rotorua - many of these were “cooking” groups where the groups bring chefs to cater for their dietary requirements - many of these groups originated out of Mumbai and catered for the Jain community - these people are strict pure vegetarians - they will only eat vegetables grown above ground – so no potato, garlic, onion etc Actions required The kitchen at Novotel was large enough to be able to dedicate part of the kitchen to allow this to happen. We needed to make sure that food safety and other health and safety was followed by their chefs - basic instructions around hygiene, dress uniform, safety etc were laid out to them and signed off - initially this was a challenge Prices needed to be negotiated to cover all costs - while they provided the food and the chefs the hotel needed to provide cutlery, crockery, staff to serve, clean up, cover breakages and make a margin on the business. We quickly asked ourselves and others what other steps did we need to take - we then made sure that we employed a range of Indian staff finding out quickly that with the caste system and also regional differences that it was important that we had the right staff. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

9. We started to be able to download the Times of India newspaper and deliver this daily, we found TV channels that were available, we provided slippers that were not standard and we created a Welcome booklet with all of the local things of interest to our Indian Guests to make them feel welcome. We introduced breakfast items on our buffet, perfected Masala Tea and started to look at ways to decorate the Hotel for Diwali and other important times Our biggest challenge though was teaching our team how to look after these guests - we contracted someone to do cultural training on why our guests were doing certain things and what we could do to make their stay more enjoyable and less frustrating to us an our other guests. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

10. In 2010 we worked with Tourism NZ to bring a Bollywood film to Queenstown - part of it was filmed in the Hotel and all around locations in and about Queenstown. The cast and crew stayed at Novotel and the “Stars” stayed at Hotel St Moritz our sister 5 Star property. I Hate Luv Stories – staring Imran Khan and Sonam Kapoor was not a hugely successful block buster but like most Bollywood films did get a lot of attention and assisted us to building up a reputation in India. Images such as the ones below and of the Hotel were seen by large audiences The following year we hosted the models for a fashion catalogue “Seasons” and got further attention. The group market continues and FIT honeymoon and general markets have grown also. In 2012 we hosted our first large Incentive Group from Johnson and Johnson - we hosted 500 staff for a 4 day trip to Queenstown. In 2013 and 2015 I went to India on sales missions to meet travel agents, MICE agents and corporates in an attempt to grow this business further – we started to look at other parts of the business and look at groups other than cooking groups - both non cooking and Incentives. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

11. Prior to going to India we discussed the possibility of being able to cater for the Indian groups in terms of catering - most Indians that currently travel are looking for Indian food and it needs to be cooked well and to their specifications so it was important that if we were to cater we need to do so well and therefore needed to employ Indian chefs. Initially 2 chefs were employed and this has grown to 4 currently. At the time the Sofitel Queenstown had a number of restaurants within the building which had gone bust as the financial crisis had taken a toll. One of these was an Indian restaurant. Seeing an opportunity I offered to take the Tandoor oven out of the restaurant if they gave it to us for free - what I did not anticipate was the weight of the oven and the difficulty of transporting it but it has been in our kitchen since and gets used a lot. This allowed us to come up with various Indian Menus, get images of Indians (mostly our staff) dressed in traditional dress eating in the Hotel so that when I went to India I could show menus and images and discuss the fact that our Hotel could cater for this market. All of our groups have to have breakfast and because of the above now the vast majority have to have a dinner at least - increasing our yield from the rooms accommodated. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION

12. Prior to going to India we discussed the possibility of being able to cater for the Indian groups in terms of catering - most Indians that currently travel are looking for Indian food and it needs to be cooked well and to their specifications so it was important that if we were to cater we need to do so well and therefore needed to employ Indian chefs. Initially 2 chefs were employed and this has grown to 4 currently. At the time the Sofitel Queenstown had a number of restaurants within the building which had gone bust as the financial crisis had taken a toll. One of these was an Indian restaurant. Seeing an opportunity I offered to take the Tandoor oven out of the restaurant if they gave it to us for free - what I did not anticipate was the weight of the oven and the difficulty of transporting it but it has been in our kitchen since and gets used a lot. This allowed us to come up with various Indian Menus, get images of Indians (mostly our staff) dressed in traditional dress eating in the Hotel so that when I went to India I could show menus and images and discuss the fact that our Hotel could cater for this market. All of our groups have to have breakfast and because of the above now the vast majority have to have a dinner at least - increasing our yield from the rooms accommodated. The Indian market has been good for our hotel - it allowed us to grow faster than the market through some difficult trading periods - it diversified the markets we were in. By leading the market we became well known in the market and have maintained support which has now grown through all months. INTERACTION - INSPIRATION - EDUCATION