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Gift a holiday

Preeti Mehra

The festive season is on. With Diwali just over and Christmas and New Year round the corner, corporates are busy focussing on how to package their products as gifts. So you have food hampers, table lamps, household ware, silverware, crystalware .... all gaily packed and ribboned into a neat little present.

This time the hospitality industry has joined the bandwagon and it's a neat idea no doubt, but a bit limited in scope. Welcomgroup has launched specially customised holiday packages where you can gift a two-night-three-day star vacation to a friend or fa mily member. The offer is for double occupancy with breakfast for a family of four (two adults and two children) for about Rs 5,000.

But here is the catch -- the offer is only for two destinations, Agra and Jaipur. Nice destinations, but with the kind of places Welcomgroup hotels are situated in, the offers could have been much more exciting. Well, the fact is -- if you have a good id ea, why not extend it to the rest of India? Especially to the group's heritage properties in the hills and near the sea, where families would prefer to take a Welcombreak.

Of course, now that ITC has started a new `Gift A Holiday' trend, others may not be far behind. So happy holidaying -- neatily and nattily packaged for the corporate customer.