Niraamaya Wellness is designed to be deeply intuitive based on the needs and lifestyle preferences of our guests and focuses on enabling healthy and sustainable transformations while enjoying a luxurious holiday.
Allen Machado, CEO of Niraamaya Wellness Retreats.
1. Can you tell us a little about yourself? Your past career and your journey in the Hospitality Industry?
It has now been a fantastic journey of over 24 years in the hospitality industry for me. I have had the good fortune to be a part of various verticals of the hospitality business ranging from premium luxury business hotels to contemporary and extravagant resort brands like The Oberoi Group of Hotels, the Intercontinental Hotels Group and The One & Only Hotels & Resorts to name a few. This spectrum of experience has always given me the ability to deliver at the highest levels. My experience in the hospitality business has always driven me to accomplish my goals and deliver results at the most crucial junctures in the span of the last 2 decades. Through the years something I cherish is having been recognized and rewarded with awards for outstanding work ranging from Operations to Revenue Management. Spearheading and launching turnkey hospitality businesses that have led to immense satisfaction of the stakeholders is something I shall always cherish. I believe in a collaborative leadership approach. I encourage my team to achieve their goals and believe strongly in their ability and professionalism.
2. How did Niraamaya Wellness Retreats come into place? How different is it from all the wellness retreats abroad?
We wanted to create a brand in the hospitality industry that stood as an outlier in every sense of the word. The idea was to be a brand which was a class apart in this highly fragmented industry. We believe wellness can and should be purely experiential and thus it’s in our nucleus to create and inspire holidays that touch people’s body, mind and souls.
Niraamaya Wellness is designed to be deeply intuitive based on the needs and lifestyle preferences of our guests and focuses on enabling healthy and sustainable transformations while enjoying a luxurious holiday.
3. Could you please describe briefly for our readers what the Niraamaya brand stands for, and some unique must-have experiences that travellers can enjoy at the various properties?
Our Retreats are an embodiment of wellness and luxury that operate in India’s most sought-after destinations. They are designed with craftsmanship that offer the stillness and charm of a peaceful retreat, integrating a seamless blend of regional heritage, contemporary hospitality and culture facets. Thoughtfully designed with the lowest density of rooms per acre, the lowest density of guests per acre, and the lowest density of staff per acre, all our retreats offer a sense of unmatched splendour and comfort through space and privacy bringing forth our unflinching commitment to wellbeing.
Our spas combine time-tested age-old traditional methods and practices, with innovative techniques to provide niche wellness vacations for our discerning guests. Our full board Ayurveda Destination Programmes are multi-day packages that combine Ayurveda therapies, Yoga and healthy diets along with a super comfortable stay at our Retreats.
We offer our guests a memorable journey with a promise of a relaxed and rejuvenated body, mind and soul through fresh air, truly good food and personalised services. We celebrate the destinations that we operate in. We have highly efficient and dedicated staff who are willing to go the extra mile and stop at nothing to ensure that every guest feels cared for and no challenge goes unresolved. This attitude of our staff helps us in keeping up the high standards consistently and providing the best to our guests.
4. How did the pandemic treat you? How did the Hotel resort manage its revenue during the pandemic era?
With the pandemic hitting us in early 2020; life as we knew it, came to a standstill. And with the mystery surrounding this virus, also came the fear. New words were added to our vocabulary that we didn’t know existed, new behaviours had to be adopted & adapted; and everyone started being aware of the invisible enemy.
Offices had to be shut down, but work could not stop. Working from home while being considered a luxury earlier, soon became a liability. Limited space & resources at home, made this arrangement increasingly difficult for the employees. Hotels lay empty even after the Lockdown restrictions were eased out and to stay afloat needed some revenues. While there was no business travel or vacations, a lot of hotels and resorts including us offered a Staycations and other packages where the guests could stay for an extended period at extremely attractive prices. This allowed them to work from their hotel rooms, in a safe environment and have a team of service staff, attend to their needs.
5. How big is the wellness market in India? How has it evolved?
The Asian Wellness Industry is estimated at USD 20 billion, and this is expected to grow at an exponential rate due to higher consumer awareness. In India,wellness is a concept which has been in vogue since ancient times and traditional medicinal and health practices like Ayurveda and yoga have propounded the concept of mental and bodily wellness. With the progress of time, wellness as a concept has taken up a multi-dimensional definition, encompassing the individual’s desire for social acceptance, exclusivity, and collective welfare.
The pandemic also raised awareness of the importance of “wellness” – a state of physical, mental, and social wellbeing – in people’s lives.
6. Since wellness is Niraamaya’s forte, how do you plan to position the brand so that it benefits from the increased interest in health and wellness tourism?
At Niraamaya, our belief is to turn the business into a truly international wellness and high-end luxury hospitality brand. While we are recognized on the global platform, we do not yet have footprint in the destinations that we envision. This is going to be our driving strategy for the next few years. On the positioning, we package a very high-end model for authentic Ayurveda. Bespoke in every way, we specialize in creating individualized wellness immersions that combine focused diet routines, personalized sessions and traditional Ayurvedic therapies in the classiest settings. The depth of these immersions is personalized to the preferences of every guest and tailored to their lifestyle choices.
7. What are your thoughts on the current situation of the hotel industry, What will be the modern growth hacking strategies?
The hospitality industry is recovering from the reeling impact of Covid, and in its aftermath. With the country seeing a steady growth, the recovery will be faster than expected this time. Guests are exploring the unexplored places of India while appreciating the natural beauty of our country. People are finding virtue in the beauty of destinations like Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Coorg, Chikmagalur and Kashmir that are predominantly popular among travellers and are seeing a huge demand.
Modern Growth hacking strategies would include key distribution channels. Large brands, online travel agencies (OTAs), global distribution systems (GDS’s), and metasearch websites which are all vying for customer attention. Hotel distribution channels are the cornerstone of a hotel’s sales and revenue strategy. To drive revenue, hotels need to attract as many customers as possible and must not only understand the “who, what, where, and when” of your customers, but most importantly, the “why” – the behavioural data, that highlights the factors that guide our guests’ travel decisions. Guest channel preferences are also crucial in developing an optimal channel mix as guests now have an unprecedented number of options for shopping and booking their hotel rooms.
8. How has the social media influx changed the way the hotel revenue is managed? and what has been its impact on the present and the future?
Social Media has always been an integral part of the marketing mix to ensure higher visibility. The major travel trend that the millennials or Gen Z are looking at is choosing experience led holidays and social media plays a very important role in amplifying and ensuring the promotions reach the correct target audience.
Social Media may not drive revenue directly, but it ensures the messaging, and the content is visible and leads to revenue generation though direct, or online portals, since most of the millennials are tech friendly.
9. What are the sustainability initiatives taken by the hotel?
At Niraamaya Retreats, we always aim to positively impact the environment. To fulfil this purpose, we have various initiatives that are committed to preserving nature and protecting fragile ecosystems by upkeeping the natural world and wildlife while taking utmost care.
We make it a point every single day to save water, soil and other precious natural resources and have partnered with local associations as well as the Global Save Soil movement led by Sadhguru. We do this by organizing workshops for the locals and our guests to generate awareness. We also recycle e-waste/plastic and upcycle cloth waste from the retreats to address the garbage load concerns. These are some of the drives we are very passionate about.
Across all our retreats we use purified water in glass bottles for our guests, to avoid the usage of plastic bottles. At few of our retreats solar power fulfils nearly 40% of our energy needs. Being a wellness retreat, we grow a wide variety of herbal and medicinal plants, and fruits that find frequent use in our kitchen and spa. Most of our food products are sourced from local fishermen and farmers.
10. Do you feel domestic travellers are as attuned to wellness travel as international ones? While inbound tourism may be at a standstill for a while longer, is Niraamaya offering anything tailormade to attract domestic travellers?
International travellers were all about confidence and yes, the business did have an impact initially. Domestic travel continues to drive the recovery in many destinations, especially those with large domestic feeder markets, helping to ease the brutal blow, at least partially. Domestic tourism continues to grow as people prefer to stay local and visit destinations within their own country.
Domestic tourists are often more price-sensitive and tend to have lower spending patterns per stay, as they take more breaks through the year. We have introduced a muti-destination package which includes an option to choose 3 of our retreats across Kerala – Athirappilly, Kumarakom and Kovalam. Staycation, Solocation, Celebration packages along with short stay Ayurveda programs starting from 3 nights are offered to attract the Indian traveller.
11. How is your F&B geared towards providing wellness menus on request, or otherwise? Are there any current food trends being followed, like mock meat being used while preparing the hotel cuisines?
We have recently relaunched our menus across all our properties which showcase the brand’s innovation, value, and culinary expertise and pays tribute to the coastal state’s cuisine. As wellness resonates across the brand’s vision, the menu also consists of healthy options based on Ayurveda and body composition. The doctors at our wellness retreats have collaborated with the chefs to create this menu. While being high on the taste quotient it combines age-old techniques of cooking to design piquant food that is high in nutrition.
We do not prefer using mock meat, however most of items are locally sourced and grown in our kitchen garden.
12. How has Niraamaya as a brand evolved in the past couple of years? What are the brand’s expansion plans?
One of the philosophies of Niraamaya Retreats is to develop and nurture properties that provide a sense of space and well-being. The group is on the constant lookout for similar properties to build alliances and acquisitions and help smaller boutique properties leverage Niraamaya’ s expertise with respect to achieving high ARRs and attracting long stay guests. We have been setting the bar high and have been an inspirational brand for over a decade and we want to leave our legacy in the hospitality industry.
We are looking at spreading our wings, not just domestically, but internationally as well. We have recently launched our Private Residence in Seychelles and are also looking at something in Singapore and in talks with few properties in in Sri Lanka and Maldives. Domestically, because we are predominantly in Kerala, our expansion plans are to move out of that geography and explore opportunities in Rajasthan, Tamil Nādu and Maharashtra.
13. As we know, you are a passionate hospitality professional, so what would be the one piece of advice you would like to give youngsters aspiring to excel in the Hospitality Industry?
In my Humble opinion, there is no short-cut to being knowledgeable and successful. Working your way up from the bottom is the only way to truly understand what it is to work in every aspect of a business. No one is going to do the work for you, and no one will understand how important your unique passion is, use that to drive your success. Overcome the obstacles to be a part of or create a revenue generating business.
Another important skill is Multitasking and flexibility. No two days are the same in hospitality industry. Work depends on the footfall of the guests. One must be able to perform multitude of tasks and work with flexibility.
