Maa Hotels: Rebranding and Digital Transformation

The Sahu family has been running the hotel business for 20 years in Odisha, India. The Indian hotel and tourism industry has drastically changed in the last few years with the introduction of the internet, online aggregators and digitally savvy young consumers. Technology has changed consumer behaviour regarding how they search for information before making a purchase decision. Sahu brothers were facing a decline in revenues and rising competition. Mr Satish, a recent MBA graduate from a premier business school, was fully aware of the changing marketing dynamics and the importance of online presence. He shared his learnings about digital marketing with the family and convinced the family to start the digital transformation of their business. The Sahu family first decided to reunite all the different hotels under one umbrella brand of Maa Hotels (the word Maa in Hindi means mother, and the family decided to use the name in reference to the famous Goddess Maa Tarini in Odisha). The family used many components of the digital marketing strategy, including search engine marketing, website creation, social media marketing and content strategy. Satish had to analyse and evaluate the first phase of digital marketing and decide on the next course of action to continue with the transformation journey. Moreover, he had to convince the family to continue investing in digital marketing, and for that, he had to prove that his continuous efforts were needed to increase revenues in the short and long term.