November 09, 2009
Drukair – Learning
Chaitanya | DrukAir | Bhutan
CHALLENGE: I would say the most challenging aspect of this internship was the lack of guidance or expectations. And this just translates to a high probability of having your report tossed into the bin to join reports from other consulting firms. What I realized a few weeks in was that, if I had to generate something implementable, I would need the backing and buy-in of some influential people from within the organization and I would have to get at least some of my recommendations incorporated into Drukair’s performance evaluation for the year.
RESULT: I can slate this as one of the most exciting and interesting projects I’ve worked on and it was most satisfying to hear that 2 of my 3 recommendations are already being implemented and the 3rd is on hold to be implemented after the other external Consultant’s complete their analysis.
ADVICE: (To someone planning on interning in a developing country)
- Get to know the locals to get to the root of the problem
- Don’t jump to conclusions in the first 10-15 days. Have some patience and speak to as many people as you can in the first 20 days before analyzing the situation. The environment can be quite complex because there are no clear processes and there can be several external stakeholders
- Network as much as you can to understand what really ticks for the senior management
- Tap all resources possible: I got a wealth of knowledge on airline organizations connecting with a random researcher somewhere in Sydney.
Posted by surya at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
Drukair: Consulting, Bhutan
Chaitanya | DrukAir | Bhutan
Drukair or the Royal Bhutan Airline (I prefer the latter) is Bhutan's only airline with 2 Airbus A319's. Sounds miniscule, doesn't it? But this is the only mode of transport into the country, unless you prefer driving 8 hours to cover 180 Kms down nauseatingly winding roads.
In past years it was highly funded by the government, but just before Bhutan moved to democracy, it was made an independent organization reporting to DHI - an investment group handling 8 of Bhutan's largest industries. So with the legacy of being a government organization, also comes its bureaucratic style of functioning. Although significant organizational changes have been made to hold people more accountable, implementation of these changes is being done extremely slowly, perfectly matching the Bhutanese way of life. So presently, it’s just a few people in the senior management running the show. Because it is a small organization, I had access to everyone from the CEO, Board of directors to Directors of the Tourism Council.
During my stint at Drukair, there were 2 other groups simultaneously working on Tourism and Drukair operations – IFC, a World Bank subsidiary and Mckinsey. So from a Consulting perspective, it was a challenging and intense learning experience and it gave me a peek into a nation developing from ground zero, the airline industry and World Bank operations.
It is surprising that for such a small country with a tourism industry of $24M & 30,000 annual tourists, there were 3 major players in constant feud with each other - Drukair, Tourism Council and the Tour operators. And I spent the first 2 weeks understanding the situation by speaking to the 3 stakeholder groups, subsidiary units like the Dept of Civil Aviation, key directors and their expectations out of the project. So a week into my internship, I scoped out my first goal.
* Goal 1: Evaluating and recommending a detailed short term (2 year) Marketing Strategy while proposing an over-arching (5 year) long-term marketing strategy.
A major portion of this stage was identifying new routes in SE Asia catering to potential tourist segments. After rounding in on 4 potential hubs, I began my primary research interviewing a number of tour operators, tourists, hoteliers, onsite travel agents and familiarization visitors. At this stage, I came across several other problems with Drukair at a local level. People had numerous complaints and some even dubbed it a ‗Roadblock to Bhutanese Tourism‘. Although some of these problems simply arose from the fact that it was the only airline flying into Bhutan
under highly restricting operating conditions; at an organizational level, there was definitely a lot of room for improvement. So that redefined my scope to include a second module
* Goal 2: Re-organization of the Commercial department of Drukair
The Commercial department included Networking, scheduling, revenue management, Marketing and ground Operations at Drukair. So with absolutely no Airline background or access to research databases, I reached out to as many as 25 Ross alums working in the airline industry and 2 of them turned out to be extremely helpful. In addition, I randomly reached out to some airline consulting firms and management consulting firms that had done substantial research in this sector. In addition to this, there were basic organizational flaws that could easily be identified
and where I could apply basic principles from IT firms in India.
* Goal 3: Marketing Strategy
Because Drukair is a monopoly, it never invested in any marketing initiatives and unfortunately nor did the Tourism Council. So in effect, Bhutan was reaching out to barely 200,000 potential tourists in any given year through Word of mouth advertising, onsite travel agents, some travel writers and media coverage. Bhutan has long since branded itself as a high-end destination because of its restricting tourism laws. This was done to prevent Bhutan from becoming a backpackers haven like Nepal and over the years it has attracted well-read experiences tourists,
who adhere to its environmental and cultural regulations. To throw in some MBA jargon, let me say that, Bhutan‘s stringent laws turned out to become its 'Core Competency‘.
So looking at a short-term marketing plan to supplement the new routes, I analyzed the market potential of a South Asian country with booming outbound tourist potential. And I must say that surprisingly, the 'Big Picture‘ was a handy tool at collating extensive information and bringing in to an understandable format. At the same time as me, a leading Management consulting firm was working on a 3 year- long tourism development plan for Bhutan. I ensured that there was no duplication of efforts and I modified my marketing plan to include:
- Target Audience identification (only for one country)
- Assessment of Competition & Channel identification
- Connecting with PR agencies for the branding efforts
- Training manual for Drukair/Tourism Council marketing team
I trained the market research team and marketing team on basic concepts of marketing strategy (All from MKT core), ensuring that they could lead the PR agencies in the right direction and have the competency to implement the management consulting firm‘s recommendations.
Posted by surya at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)
Drukair - Bhutan
Chaitanya | DrukAir | Bhutan
Bhutan is about half the size of Nepal, with approx 700,000 people, forest cover of 72% and a per capita GDP of ~$5000. I landed James Bond style into Bhutan's narrow and only air-strip in Paro on June 14th and there began my Bhutanese odessey (To watch the landing click here). I was hired to work with Drukair by DHI (Druk Holdings and Investments), a Government Investment group that manages 8 of Bhutan's largest industries, one of which is Drukair.
Even though Bhutan is one of the the remotest and reclusive nations in the world, people are highly sophisticated - Live in relationships are common place and largely accepted, primary education is exceptionally good and being a matriarchal society, women enjoy a rather liberated life. Most Bhutanese are educated in either India, Thailand, US, UK or Singapore and now there is a new breed of young generation pioneers driving change in this country. The beauty of Bhutan is the fact that it is definitely progressing on the right track, but it is consciously and slowly (and sometimes painfully slowly) making changes without disrupting the culture & environment to a great extent. These changes at the Bhutanese pace are captured in its literacy drive in the early 90s that increased the literacy rate from barely 12% in 1991 to a healthy 78% in 2003.
After being a monarchy for over 100 years, this exceptionally religious Buddhist country decided to move to democracy in 2008 on the King's insistence.
I lived in Paro, a small town with ~25000 people, close to the airport and the drukair headquarters. Working there was a pleasure because that included walks along the river, Paro Tsu, winding through the paro valley and relishing authentic and extremely tasty Bhutanese cuisine, intricate Bhutanese architecture and culture.
Weekends meant hiking up to nearby trekking spots, hot stone baths, wading along shallow areas of the river and wild strawberry picking! Of course burly stray dogs were a major menace because Buddhism forbids killing of animals and they somehow have not managed to get these local goons into a dog pound. After a few instances where a few local dog gangs cornered me, I equipped myself with the best protection possible and like an extremely adaptable Ross MBA, I went on with my walks/treks with a long walking stick and a strong umbrella. Before closing the discussion on Bhutan and the Bhutanese, I must definitely add a few words on Bhutanese food.
Cheese and Green Chillies are perpetual ingredients in any dish and in fact, Ema Datsi - a Cheese and Chilly curry is Bhutan's national dish. Although it’s not as spicy as it sounds, it definitely is not for the american palate. But people with a taste for Indian/Italian food will relish it and its a pity that there are barely any restaurants outside of Bhutan that serve this cuisine.
Posted by surya at 05:58 PM | Comments (0)
