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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. Introduction to Club Mahindra .1
2. Business Model4
3. Membership Benefits6
4. Flaws in the current scheme..7
5. PEST Analysis..8
6. SWOT Analysis10
7. Competitors Analysis12
8. Brand Challenges..13
9. Objectives.14
10. Target Segment...15
11. Website Redesigning..17
12. Club Mahindra on Facebook..23
13.Club Mahindra Blog. ..28
14.Print Campaign for elderly.. 31
15. Appendix Creative Strategy.32

Introduction to Club Mahindra

Part of the USD 15.9 billion Mahindra group

Provides holidays on a timeshare basis
Leading leisure hospitality providers in India, offering quality family holidays with a
range of services designed to meet the diverse holiday needs and interests of a family
Fastest growing customer base of over 143000 members and 42 resorts across hill
stations, beaches, backwaters, wildlife, forts and heritage, as well as international
destinations

Club Mahindra wants to become the first choice for urban families for holidays and
leisure services in Asia
Differentiated itself by adopting an integrated business model. These includes
member acquisition, member servicing, resort creation and resort operation, resulting
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in the delivery of a complete holiday experience

Mission

The Company's Mission is to enrich and enliven peoples lives by making family holidays
a part of their lifestyle

Vision

The Companys Vision is to become a dominant player in the Lifetime Holiday business
in Asia and eventually the world

Business Model

The company is into the business of providing leisure hospitality in India primarily through
vacation ownership memberships

The company operates with floating week or floating resort model where the member gets the
flexibility of choosing a different resort and the time to holiday every year

The company generates its revenues by charging membership fee which

is paid at the time enrolment as a member. The amount of fees charged
depends upon the payment plan selected by the member
The company also charges an annual fee throughout the membership
period for the annual servicing and the maintenance of the resorts
The member also pays for use of various facilities and services at the
resort, including food and beverages, spa facilities, sight seeing

 Resort Design
and development
Identification and
acquisition of
land

Lifestyle Product
marketing
approach
Pan-India multi
channel sales
approach

Resort
Creation

Sales &
Marketing

Resort
Experience

Member
Management

Pictorial representation
of the business model

Additional values
opportunities
Full service resorts

Holiday planning &

reservation services
Active customer
feedback system
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Membership Benefits

Currently entitles members the choice of holidaying at any of its 35 resorts, for seven days
each year, in a season and apartment type of their choice for 25 years in India
Also gives access to its members to over 6,000 resorts across 90 countries by paying a
simple nominal exchange fee in Indian rupees and get holiday accommodation for the
entire family
Option of choosing to holiday outside their season and apartment of their entitlement by
using companys exchange program. The company also gives flexibility to its time share
members to carry forward their annual entitlement, subject to certain conditions and get a
choice to access a range of resorts globally through its RCI affiliation
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Flaws in the Current Scheme

Book 6 months in advance and still not guarantee availability

Finance Calculation

3.5L - Initial amount + 11k annually for maintenance. 3.5L @ 10% interest - 35k as interest +
11k as annual charge for 7 nights = 46k, 6.5k/night roughly.
Apart from this - 25 years membership i.e 3.5L / 25 yrs = 14k annual depreciation. So, summing
one pays 60k for 7 nights

Not a holiday package Pay for food, travel and sight seeing
Decent accommodation at the desired destination and season of choice are options for

PEST Analysis
Political

Government is charging high tax rates on luxury and star category hotels
A luxury tax of 10% followed by VAT and other service taxes makes hotel business in India costly
As the political scenario is not conducive, J&K and North Eastern states have suffered even after having
high potential

Economy

Growth in income levels in developing nations is a major driving force for the tourism industry

Local citizens are facing a tough time due to high interest and inflation rates

Social

Improved infrastructure is attracting foreign tourists but because of the safety and
crime issues there is still a sense of reluctance

Technological

Social media has helped to increase the visibility of the brand and many unexplored
places
The Incredible India campaign with other state tourism campaigns has added value for
tourism in India
This has helped in promoting the tourism and make families want to explore new places
in the country
Reading, researching about a place, flight and hotel bookings, maps, reviews, itinerary
design is now done completely online
With the emergence of low cost airlines and accessibility to Tier 2 and 3 cities has10
helped to promote the tourism Industry

SWOT Analysis
Weakness

Strength

Strong Brand Image & high brand recall

Pan-India presence & growing global presence
Customer Centricity adding a personal touch
through its staffs mannerisms & preference
anticipation
Vertically integrated in operations to have control
over all aspects of business
Providing a safe & secure environment
Designing each resort with a fun zone to
provide its customers that unique experience
Customer Base of over 143000 members

Service & Infrastructure quality is inconsistent

throughout the brand
Customer complaints with regard to Membership
unsatisfactory practices, deficiency in services &
unfulfilled promises

Excruciating exit mechanisms- members lose 3040% of membership fees

No proper Grievance Redressal Mechanism
Company policy of 6-months- prior booking
provoked negative customer reaction
Limited personnel who face long work-hours &
low pay
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Opportunities

Threats

Incredible India! Campaign & influx of foreign

tourists provides new avenues

Increasing and expanding the infrastructure- to

accommodate more tourists.

Decreasing the membership fee -by offering

membership for a lesser duration like 5 years or 10
years.

Allowing more tie ups with other companies - for

obtaining a better perspective which in turn can
promote tourism.

Competition from international hospitality giants

entering the Indian market

Competition from Indian hospitality companies

such as Country Club
Adventure Sports companies getting into the
tourism space
Economic Downturn & recession has badly
impacted the tourism & hospitality industry

Catering to the middle income group - which is in

majority in India
Furthering the time-share model with more tieups
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Country Club India Ltd.

Yatra.com & Makemytrip.com

Country Club

Club Mahindra

Allow booking in real time. Have multiple options to pick from

Introduced the concept of

family clubbing

Do not have pre- booking constraints as is the case with Club Mahindra

Owns the clubs and allows

franchisee and affiliation

Owned all resorts initially but

has over 100 authorized
franchisees today

One-stop shops for all travel needs. Have a robust mobile channel

Caters to high income group

Caters to high income group

Have tie ups with various banks and private organizations. Club
Mahindra lacks here as well

Offers membership for a lesser

duration.

Does not have any such

schemes.

Build your own package options in these 2 make them more economical
for money conscious customers

Thomas Cook
12 billion in revenues, 22.3 million customers, 31,000
employees and operates in six geographies

Actively pursues M&As. Provides travel related financial services

as opposed to Club Mahindra
They have broad based their services portfolio by entering into
the aviation industry

Cox and Kings

Has a strong online presence unlike Club Mahindra
Multiple geographies presence

Very robust CSR spending

Diverse portfolio ranging from Leisure Travel, Corporate Travel,
Trade Fairs, Visa Processing & foreign exchange.

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Various memberships & accreditations unlike Club Mahindra which

does not have many in its name

Brand Challenges

The most exciting challenge is to drive faster penetration of vacation ownership in India

Big gap between available inventory and number of members

Not a one stop shop for all travel needs like makemytrip.com
Inconsistent service and infrastructure quality

Current members are unhappy and hence word of mouth publicity taking a negative
route
Very low engagement on website and facebook
Complaints are not addressed efficiently via twitter
Target group is limited in terms of high income, middle aged

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Objectives

Increase brand engagement with existing member and potential customers

This will be achieved through revamp of the companys website and Facebook page
Change the negative attitude among existing members by actively addressing their issues
Target the potential affluent elderly in India, which is currently not tapped by any of the
competitors
Position the brand as Holiday with family 7 days a year for 25 years to instill confidence
and overcome competition from makemytrip and yatra.com (Using facebook and other
social media campaigns for this)

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Target Segments
Primary target group Middle aged, upper middle class
Our target market is earning men and women (aged 20 to 55). of who are married and would like to travel
with their children. We are focussing on this group as they would like to take some time off their stressful
life and go out and have fun
Secondary target group Affluent Elderly, aged above 55
India today has 100 million elderly people. If you take 5% of them as the
middle class, it comes to five million people.Senior citizens are
independent, financially stable, well-travelled and socially
connected. With their children settled abroad India's senior citizens
are now in pursuit of a life post retirement which offers time for
relaxation & hassle- free living. Hence, India's affluent elderly now
consider life after retirement as an opportunity to spend more time with
families, pursue hobbies, develop new interests or even continue
working or starting a new career. They are our secondary target market
as they are more independent and better equipped to take decisions
post their retirement

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Existing Media Channels

Three:
- Print, Television, Digital
- Maximum focus - Digital. Have more than 1.1 million fans on facebook, 26k fans on twitter
- Television is the next focus, Ads have failed to make a connection
- Print ads only near known holiday season
Rely more on word of mouth. 30% of all new members have enrolled through referrals

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On the homepage there is a tab called upcoming events at our resorts. This space is totally blank. We need to either put
something there or remove it. It makes no sense to keep something which is conveying no message

A simple option like this which is

currently not there can be effective in
creating a TOM recall for people who
plan their travel at some future date.

There is no helpline number or contact section, which makes it difficult for visitors to solve their queries. All that you can do is, fill
the form and wait for them to contact you. Some options can be

They have generalized the photos as one motion tab at the bottom of the page which talks about experiences at their resorts.
However, there must be experiences exclusive to each place in each resorts folder
Also there is a need for them to come up with videos of their resorts and the cinematic experience of that place at large. Here we
can quote the YouTube example that their advertisements have been able to generate just 1/10th of the total number of views that
their video experiences have generated which means that people are more interested in knowing the experience in advance18 and a
video is the best way to project that experience in a beautiful way

NPS ( Net Promoter Score) -We can put NPS in front page to inform users/customers/visitors about their
likability in terms of services. http://www.netpromotersystem.com/about/measuring-your-netpromoterscore.aspx

3rd eye view- One more advantage of these scores is to take sites passive nature to active zone where customers
feel regular upgradation

Any website information has to be robustly reproduced on the facebook page so that website traffic is kept
flowing
Feedback or acknowledgement tab is a prerogative
Multiple login options. Lets give members multiple choices to login to avoid hiccups of remembering
passwords

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Yatra at 247 and makemytrip at 78 in rank are way ahead of ClubMahindras 3758 but better Club Mahindra ranks better than
Cox &Kings and Thomas Cook

The figure above shows that time spent on website is 4:05 which is too much. This time must be encashed by the company to
take the visitors into the whole experience of club Mahindra & prompt them into buying the membership.

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The YouTube link on the homepage takes you to a new tab which has just 8 videos. This obviously belittles
the magnitude of business that Club Mahindra does. Their other videos must be integrated here and shown
as a full fledged YouTube channel.
The facebook, twitter, google+ links should appear on the top of the page instead of bottom of the page
The updates and news articles can be shared on the homepage as a separate segment, preferable as motion
tab on the top of the page to make it look up to date.
No information about club Mahindras head office is given, that must be looked into

The annual servicing cost is Rs 12000 apart from the 25 year membership cost

Lets share information with Customer- Any updates of the company in terms of tie-ups should
appear on the top of the page so that customer gets information about our growth.
Lets have a word with Customer- The video of customer sharing word about Club Mahindra
services can be changed on a monthly basis or we can keep repository of videos using Amazon
S3 services (which is again costly but destructive)
We can also ask them to fill occasional short surveys to get an idea about their interests and
wants from our website.
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From these figures it is clear that more

people are interested to know about
membership and the current member
engagement is very low. Gift vouchers
are hardly attractive to people and so is
the feedback (1.70%). So member
engagement must be top priority.
How fast does clubmahindra.com load?
Slow (2.897 Seconds), 76% of sites are faster.
Which means that our interface has to be made faster.

Members as the Boss- We can make the portal interactive for the members by asking them about their
suggestions. For egWhich places in future do you want to visit ?
What better should Club Mahindra do for you ?
This can be a general questionnaire which can be sent to the them via mail or given to them at the time of check
out.
We are basically crowdsourcing ideas for the company.
Also, visitors looking for membership must get an immediate response from the portal so that their interest
does not die off in the wait period or conversely they do not approach any other competitor before CM. The
lag
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time for contact is very high currently.

Something like
this on the
homepage
near the scroll
bar on the right

This is perhaps one of the most important

statistics. This shows the people who visit the
website. This can help us in behavioral targeting.
The trends show that over-represented visitors
are Male graduates browsing at work.
Using this, we can effectively cover those who are
not prompted to visit us. For eg- a home away
from home Ad to lure women. Conversely this
can be used to convert visitors into buyers those
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who visit us more than the other groups.

Club Mahindra on Facebook

Broadcast, Dont engage
Club Mahindras online presence talks all about Only Broadcast, Dont engage. It is seen across all their online presence,
where they keep sharing content but in return receive very poor engagement. On Facebook, where they have 1.1 Million Fans
(thats not a small number) and on an average they get not more than 250-300 likes.
They do share good content on Facebook, check out this picture where they asked their audiences for caption and got only 1
reply and 206 likes.
This conveys one message; Content is the King, just push it across.

If Content is the King, Distribution is the Queen and engagement is

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a two-way process, you cant expect people to keep talking and
engaging with your content just because you are acting as a broadcaster.

Whos following You ?

Who needs real people as followers; we rather get some fake accounts and increase our
numbers of followers on Social Media. More than 60% of followers on their Twitter handle are
fake, more than 30% are inactive!
If you end up getting some genuine followers, you will have to put efforts in keeping them
happy and then they might turn-up as your customers; focus on numbers, buy
bulk fans/followers.
Obsession with numbers is good when you are focused on your sales target, but not on social
media certainly. Have genuine followers whom you can develop relationships with and they in
turn will connect, promote and engage with your product/service.

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Become a Robot

Whenever their customers come-up with a query, problem or even appreciate them, they have 1
customized reply for each of them like a template. Its explicitly visible on their Twitter and Facebook
accounts.
Have standard templates for complaints, queries and when thanking them. You save your time as well as
dont bother much about what your followers/fans will think! As long as you are getting your job done
It is extremely important to know the social platform you are using, as you cant post the same content
on all platforms. They all vary: some are picture specific; some are a mix of videos and written content etc.
Thus publish content according the platforms.

If you are really interested in building relationships with your fans online, be human. Its highly recommended
that you resolve the issue in public and not ask people to fill a grievance form, make them feel valued and
appreciated and take out some time to draft personal messages to them.

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Integrating with other Social Media platforms

What your adventure quotient?
Apps like these add a fun element and also helps in involving
customers

Integrate with travel sites like Trip Advisor

This is one of the most trusted sites and many consumers
share their experiences.
This caters to a large audience and also gives a fair idea to
your potential customers.

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Integrate the facebook page with Instagram, Pinterest and Google + to expand the viewership.

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Blog

The blog domain name is different from the domain name of Club
Mahindras actual website. In order to get the most out of visitors, blog
should be made a sub-domain of the actual website and the tab for the
same should be provided on the home page.
The User Interface of the current blog is dull and dry. If a blog is all about
sharing experiences, the UI should be more engaging.
Blog has a lot of static content and in order to be more engaging
dynamic content should be used(Videos, Flash Files)
As people would like to read real experiences they should integrate the
blog with various social media platforms so that user can login through
their Facebook/twitter account and can post their experience with Club
Mahindra.
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The concept of Clay has been mentioned on the blog. It is such an exciting thing to
communicate, but has been done so without any showcase of passion. Such a concept
explained only with plain text.

There is no way of getting in touch with Club Mahindra on the blog, also there is no way
of signing up or even following the blog.
What makes a blog success is the number of users following it. Here, comments should
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be integrated with Facebook so that whatever you post

Clicks @ Clay is an interesting idea already existing on the blog, should take it forward by
making the content dynamic.
Blogs trust score by a tool from
Edelman.

They will need to reach out to more people and engage in conversations via comments, make
more informed and regular posts and focus more on understanding your audience to ensure
your posts are something that they want to read.
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Gifting Back to Your Parents :

This print ad campaign focuses on the working
professionals gifting back in the form of Club
Mahindra Vacation packages for their elderly
parents.
The children display their love & concern for their
parents by wanting them to enjoy a hassle-free
holiday at Club Mahindras beautiful resorts!

Young-at-Heart Companionship Package :

This print ad campaign directly targets the senior citizens with
the tagline Young at Heart. It offers entertainment such as
movies, golf, cards room, chess room; and services exclusively
for the elderly such as personal assistance during outings/
sightseeing, ayurveda & physiotherapy centres, gardening &
cookery classes.
It aims at helping senior citizens develop new hobbies and
rediscover old ones, while living life to the fullest.
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Creative Strategy
Why are we advertising?

To increase brand engagement with existing TG.

To increase sales of membership plans by targeting a new segment.

Who are we talking to (and what do we know about them)?

Existing TG -

Middle Aged, Upper Middle Class/Working Professionals with families

People who would like to get some time off from their hectic schedule and rejuvenate themselves with their
families

New TG -

Affluent elderly people who have retired or are close to retirement.

Middle aged, working professionals who want to gift vacations to their elderly parents

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What do we want them to think or do?

Change their perceptions towards our brand view brand as more customer oriented

Influence customers to actively consider holidays / vacations at Club Mahindra resorts

Make customers/ members feel more engaged post their experience through an improved social media platform

What is the core brand insight?

Todays hectic schedules & high pressure lifestyles make it almost necessary for working professionals get some time out
with their families. Hence they are looking for that perfect vacation to relax & rejuvenate themselves.

What should the campaign say?

Club Mahindra offers the perfect escape

It cares for its customers / members wants to give them the best experience
It allows its members to spend quality-time with their loved ones
Offers a chance to the elderly to relive their lifes enjoyable experiences
It promotes the idea of gifting back to ones parents (esp. elderly parents)
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Thank You
GROUP MEMBERS -

Arshiya Das
Gundeep Singh
Harsh Agarwal
Tarini E
Vidhit Bhatia
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