The hospitality and tourism sector as well as energy-sensitive sectors like the glass sector cheer the US-Iran peace deal announcement and remain hopeful about the growth path ahead. Given below is an excerpt from an exclusive conversation with Sonavi Kaicker, CEO, Neemrana Hotels and Suraj Mehta, Chief Strategy officer, Hindusthan National Glass & Industries Limited.
Q. Sonavi, your thoughts on how the US-Iran peace deal will impact the tourism and hospitality sector and the psychological impact and sentiment of travellers?
A. Thank you so much for inviting me on this lovely platform. I think before we really delve into the details of the impact on the tourism sector, as you rightly mentioned, there has been a direct impact, which is really the psychological one on the sentiments of the traveller that have been impacted because people travel for a host of reasons and they certainly don’t travel to be stranded away from home or to be in a difficult situation where the flights get cancelled, and then travelling back becomes an entire ordeal in itself. So I think the Middle East tensions, when they escalated, there were several cancellations. There was a dip in inbound travel, which was expected. India was actually heading into
the off-season, really, with April, May, June being summer months across the country. So I feel that if this actually gets resolved and signed soon, we are extremely hopeful that the sentiments of the traveller actually will then resume because the volatility in fuel rates has played an impact and there have also been air connectivity issues, cancellations on certain sectors as well. So we’re looking forward to a lot of normalcy in travel, things are looking up for us now.
Q. Right, hopeful of normalcy, Suraj would you say that the glass manufacturing sector is also hopeful? What are the lessons to learn for India’s manufacturing sector going forward?
A. Thank you for having me. Definitely, this is going to be a historical moment, not only for the glass industry, but for the entire manufacturing sector. The West Asia crisis had created a huge impact and spike in the gas prices, fuel prices, which impacts glass industry directly and especially industries like us, we operate 24×7, it has a huge operational impact. So our glass furnaces operate 24×7 and they generally operate on one of these fuels like furnace oil or RLNG or LPG etc. So at the peak of the West Asia crisis, the sector was really hit.
US-Iran Peace Deal: Tourism & Glass Sector Set For Boost, Closure Pending
