You want to plan a trip. You want the best hotels, convenient flights, reservations, tickets to shows, and the most unique experiences. Who should you call? Footprint Holidays!
Vish Gopalakrishnan, CEO and Director of Footprint Holidays, chatted with us about being one of India’s biggest luxury travel curation companies. “Footprint has been in the travel industry for over 15 years now. We started in Chennai and largely remained in the South as a boutique travel-planning company for years, and we slowly started to expand. We specialise in fully personalised family holidays and special interest small groups,” he explains.
The company operates solely in the premium and luxury travel segments. 80% of their curation revolves around family trips, and the other 20% is planning retreats, forums, and small corporate events. “When it comes to group trips, it’s usually for an association like Rotary Club or International Women’s Association. We also handle small functions for our own clients, intimate gatherings like 40th, 50th, or 80th birthday parties. We have worked hard over the years to become market leaders in the luxury travel industry,” Vish says.
Footprint is a member of Serandipians, an accreditation agency based in Europe. They have their own rating system, and they accredit companies that are truly luxurious. “We were one of the first companies in India to get certified as a Serandipian member,” he says proudly. “It’s essentially a stamp to award confidence in being a luxury travel planning company. It’s well-recognised within the trade and clients who belong to a very premium segment. When a client finds out that we have this accreditation, they believe they’re in the right place. They understand that we cater to high standards.”
Vish walks through his background before joining his partner, Uma Ratnam Krishnan, who is the Founder of Footprint. “I worked in the corporate industry for years. I worked with IKEA and Reliance in both the retail and branding sides. Both my jobs allowed me to travel extensively, which only fuelled my passion for it. I quit in 2012 to pursue Footprint. I now handle operations across the company.”
When a client approaches Footprint with the intent to plan a holiday, the team designs and personalises their travel according to their needs. If a family of four wants four different itineraries, they work to incorporate the preferences of every member. They book properties in the 5-star category. “We also double as a concierge. We do all the bookings and reservations, from restaurants to show tickets, visas, and flights. We are an end-to-end service agency. We take about 3 months to plan a holiday, and the minimum spend is $5000 per person, which totals about $20,000 for a family of four. The cost, depending on the client’s requirements, can go up to $300,000,” Vish describes.
They have curated unique holidays, like a 100-day honeymoon for a couple. They also curated a trip to India for the Harvard Business School as a retreat. Their major clientele includes a lot of corporate owners and CEO’s, celebrities, and industrialists. They work and network with leading hotel chains across the world, availing special rates and privileges for their clients, like Four Seasons and Belmond.
A nighttime event with a live band
The Footprint team prides itself on curating unique experiences. Once they receive a brief, they do ample research on the location. All their product managers travel widely and can find the best possible options for clients. The team members constantly go on recce’s and research trips, building their product portfolio. They have preferred partners in almost every country across the world, which makes it convenient to plan a well-rounded holiday.
Talking about the current scenario, Vish says, “What we face today is markedly different from what we saw 15 years ago. People still want everything to be completely personalised, but now, with the rise of AI, we make sure it is used only to enhance and support our capabilities to design an itinerary. It is presently a trend to use AI to curate and develop an entire itinerary. We will never do that, but we have had to adapt to using it to make the process a bit simpler. We solely use it to enhance the ease of the digital experience.”
Footprint Holidays is a luxury travel-planning company, curating unique experiences and premium trips
When asked about how luxury travel has changed over the years, Vish details, “Today, luxury is catering to the client’s every need. Finding the right hotels based on their tastes is a luxury, of course, but there is more to it. Giving them new experiences and being able to assist them every step of the way during their holiday is a luxury.”
Lessons learnt over the years? Countless. “We knew this earlier, but COVID really managed to hit home the fact that this business is extremely volatile. This industry is affected by a lot of uncertainties, especially geopolitical ones. Any type of political conflict means our industry will be impacted directly. A big issue is climate change. We cannot suggest specific locations at specific times of the year confidently; we have to give the clients a fair warning that the weather can likely be unpredictable. There has been a dramatic shift over the past decade. Another factor is that airlines dominate and control the industry. If the flight price goes up, so do your hotels, guides, transportation, and everything else related to a trip. There’s a reason why I call it volatile—if someone wants to travel in April, but isn’t able to do so owing to various external, uncontrollable factors, they will mostly not postpone their trip; they will cancel it. They might go next year, but they will most probably not compensate immediately, which results in a lost opportunity, both for them and for us,” Vish expresses.
As for what drives Vish, “Travel is something that’s always exciting and always new. I’ve been to Italy nine times, I think, but every single time, there’s something different to explore, something fresh to experience. Travel opens up new cultures, different cuisines, a myriad of people, and that’s what I want to keep doing.”
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