Organisation

Background: Tourism industry in India has been growing significantly but the resultant development, however, is quite skewed with nearly 50% of the total traffic going to only 50 of 850 known destinations in India. This results in carrying capacity issues, un-reasonably high tariffs and heavy peak load demand at these destinations while there are large number destinations which suffer from lower occupancy.

Potential: A majority of tourism destinations are either located or surrounded by rural geographies; hence rural tourism business models like home-stays, farm stays or community- managed guest houses [which use existing infrastructure and leverage the competitive strengths of rural households] offer viable & sustainable options even at low occupancies. Despite high growth potential and quicker pay-backs, rural tourism has not picked up significantly due to issues like information asymmetry, difficult booking and payment processes, non-availability of quality budget accommodations and poor quality services.

Mission: NE Rural Tourism Private Limited [RTNE] is established with a mission to bridge the supply chain gaps by identifying and investing in financially viable rural tourism business opportunities which positively impact the host communities and provide sustainable solutions to travelers, accommodation providers and travel service providers in technology, marketing and finance.

Vision: RTNE's vision is to become a partner of choice in the rural tourism industry providing access to financial and non-financial resource.

RTNE works with a network of Destination Management Companies [DMC] who act as a Destination steward and focus on the sustainable development of the destination. The set up is designed to intensively work with smaller disaggregated accommodation options on improving the Infrastructure by providing access to financial and non financial resources and Services through handholding and training. The objective of DMC is to improve the Revenues per available room [Revpar] in the destinations.

Solutions

At RTNE, the major thrust is to address the Rural Tourism supply chain gaps - both on the demand side as well as the supply side by developing Rural Tourism Solutions.

• Access to Market: RTNE's supply side partners get an instant access to large number of distribution channels and a dedicated sales & marketing team which works towards increasing their returns on their investment.
• Providing content: RTNE's demand side partners get an instant access to large number of stay options in the desired price range in a Destination.
Servicing leads: RTNE's dedicated team with its strong ground presence provides quality service with quick turnaround time to the demand aggregators.
• Quality stay: RTNE's strength is to work closely with rural stay options to improve the quality of infrastructure and services by providing training, design solutions and finance. The physical quality is measured on a metric and service levels are measured through customer feedbacks. On meeting the quality criteria, such stays are classified as RTNE trusted stays.
Best rates: RTNE does not mark up rates and quote the same rate as offered by rural accommodation providers and ensures price transparency.
• Product Development: RTNE works with suppliers as well as demand aggregators to develop products and packages to meet rapidly changing customer requirement.
Managerial inputs: RTNE also provides hand holding as well as other managerial inputs to its partners.
• Training & Development: RTNE facilitates intensive training as well refreshers course to partners to provide quality services.
Industry Network: With RTNE's pan-India focus and presence in multiple locations, its partners get access to the Tourism-Industry network to meet other business requirements.
• Supply Chain Integration: RTNE is a supply chain builder hence its partners get support at each level in the rural tourism supply chain.

RTNE Trusted Stays

There are two basic components of rural tourism business models [rural home stay, farm stays, community guest houses and other rural stay options], Hardware - i.e. infrastructure and Software i.e. services and both of them are susceptible to systematic risks.

RTNE works primarily to eliminate such risks by providing design solutions and training the host communities so that they can provide quality infrastructure and service to the customers. Due to strong field presence, RTNE continuously engage with the host communities, to improve and maintain the quality of infrastructure and the service levels. The same is monitored through physical inspection and customer feedbacks. Rural stay options which meet the benchmark are promoted as RTNE trusted stays, wherein RTNE assures travelers or agents looking to sell such accommodation of the quality of services and the infrastructure.