ITC Welcomgroup, The Leela and The Lalit are among those that ensure all touch-points for women travelling alone will be -- no prizes for guessing this -- ladies.
A young couple sharing a laugh - in the living room over a Polish joke book, on the beach, in the rain - with the tagline, "Made for each other", hung from billboards at prominent street corners from the 1960s to the 1990s. It was a campaign for one of the largest selling cigarette brands in India, Wills (Navy Cut) from the ITC stable, that resonated with a generation of smokers and non-smokers alike till the curtains came down on tobacco advertising in 2004. As we prepare to welcome 2024, ITC has metamorphosed from a tobacco giant into a conglomerate straddling multiple large-sized businesses. In the mind space of Gen Z or millennials, the company represents a gamut of branded products - from frozen food (ITC Master Chef), noodles (YiPPee!), and cookies (Sunfeast) to snacks (Bingo!) and notebooks (Classmate), and so on and so forth.
As reservations plunge, hotels are boosting their banqueting and restaurant business to make up for losses.
Leading five-star hotels in the country are taking their signature restaurants to cities across the country, thanks to their success and popularity. Taj Hotels and Palaces in Mumbai will open its signature Japanese restaurant, Wasabi by Morimoto, in Delhi by early next year.
The 10 ITC Hotels branded as Sheraton at present were expected to be re-branded as Luxury Collection soon, sources in the know said.
Forty years on, ironically, the managerial attention to new businesses has meant almost 40 per cent of revenues now come from the non-tobacco business.
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