Born out of love for travel and an interesting business opportunity, Outbound Marketing, lead by Vasudha Sondhi and Sanjay Sondhi, has graduated from a representation organisation to a one stop outsourced solution for sales and marketing. Almost 15 years in the travel and hospitality industry, the company continues to deliver the best results due to their deep understanding of the market By Saloni Bhatia
Outbound Marketing was formed in 2002 to meet the growing demand for new market approaches and cost effective distribution solutions in the hospitality industry. Soon it became one of the fastest growing travel representation companies in India and has gone beyond representation, providing sales, marketing, research, PR and media solutions to international hotels, national tourism offices and travel related products. Their understanding of the sector and strategic approach towards generating revenues has led the company to represent major tourism boards and hotels in India. Vasudha Sondhi, marketing director, Outbound Marketing, has been in the industry for more than 30 years. She left a successful job as the regional director, Le Meridian, South East Asia to start with this venture along with her husband. Sharing how it all began, she states, “Sanjay’s excitement and love for travel made us pick this opportunity. He felt that this business opportunity could have a life span. That is when we started outbound marketing in 2002 and started acquiring more clients.” With just love for travel and no background in tourism, Sanjay Sondhi, CEO, OM Tourism, ventured into the industry with his business skills. Sharing his thoughts, he says, “It was totally a new platform and you learn from the way other people are travelling. You see how the trends are changing and adapt and come up with the solutions accordingly.” Talking about the evolving trends in the industry, Vasudha Sondhi adds, “Changes are happening in a span of five years. Especially in India, we have seen the emergence of new cities, emergence of new travel segments as the younger lot is travelling now, they are more into adventure experiences and they are more into using different modes of travel. They could also do self drives, cycling trips, e-biking, mountain biking. We have seen the emergence of these sectors very sharply in the last five years., making people independent in order to book by themselves.”
Evolving trends
Talking about the changes in tourism, Sanjay threw some light on the noticeable trends, “The reasons are changing for tourism. Earlier tourism was aspirational, today along with being aspirational, people want it to be experiential as well. Now they want to experience wellness tourism, adventure tourism, etc, and wish to try different things. People are now able to compare on what would be cheaper place to travel or whether they should take an international trip instead.”
The Sondhis started OM Tourism in 2008 that specialises in sales and marketing for the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. They used their market knowledge and expertise to best present the national tourism boards and market destinations, luxury resorts and other niche destinations. Vasudha Sondhi says, “The scope of our business was always handling marketing and public relations for tourism boards. We felt that to do marketing for tourism boards under Outbound Marketing would be a challenge and therefore we came up with Om Tourism. We were totally wired with sales and revenue and driving hard numbers in for hotels, but here you have a destination where you have PR, marketing and driving consumer demand which a different aspect of the work all together.”
Talking about the challenges she shares, “Making our clients understand the India market and their requirements is surely a challenge. The culture differences also make a huge impact. Anybody who needs business has to incorporate the cultural differences in order to cater to the market. The second challenge would be the market reach, for us to make the message and our product update to each and every travel consultant in India. Sanjay Sondhi points out that webinars have not been successful. “They can only work when people are willing to learn. We have seen some great potential among agents, who are unaware about some things in a destination. There is surely a curiosity to learn, but lack of facilities leads to lack of interest,” he adds.
The travel industry has seen a great turnaround and it is evident with the number of people travelling abroad and within the country. The emergence of new tourism sectors like golf tourism, MICE travel and corporate travel has also increased demand. Sanjay Sondhi opines, “I think travel is surely going to grow. Cruise tourism might get more attention in the coming time from Indian travellers.” Vasudha Sondhi foresees great potential in the wedding and MICE travel segment.