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India is one of the major suppliers of handicrafts to the global market. Highly labor intensive, and basically cottage based, the industry is more widespread in the rural and urban areas. The industry provides a livelihood for more than 6 million artisans including a big share of women artisans, and people from the weaker sections of the society.

There is a good demand for Indian handicraft products in countries such as US, Canada, France, Britain, Italy, and Germany. Indian handicrafts are much preferred in the fashion industry. Development in sectors like retail, real estate etc increases the demand, and gives more opportunities for handicraft products. Emergence of e-commerce and internet has emerged as a promising distribution channel to market and sell handicraft items.

Positive Factors Supporting the Sector:

Indian Handloom Cluster has a large, diversified, and potential market. It is equipped with strong and diversified supportive retail infrastructure. It has an assortment of product range due to the diversified culture prevalent in the country. The industry is further enhanced with low capital investment, production flexibility, and cheap labor rates that result in competitive price for its products. Handicrafts sector has fewer barriers for new entry, and also proves to be a potential source of employment.

Achilles Heels of the Industry:

Despite of all the technological advancements happening globally, there is still a lack of awareness about it in this sector. The artisans do not have awareness about the new technologies. They do not get adequate details about the current market trends. Further more; they lack information regarding international requirements and market scenario. Hence they are not able to commercialize their skills in the right way. Though Indian made handicraft items have a healthy demand in the global market, lack of adequate infrastructure and communication facilities hinder the marketing activities.

Moreover, there is very less co-ordination among government bodies, and private players. They sector still remains under nourished with young people not much interested in this craftsmanship. The industry is confined to small cities and rural areas with the market remaining untapped.

The Dark Phase:

There is no adequate balance between demand and supply. The industry faces a tough competition with handicrafts from countries like China, and South Africa. The advanced technology and R&D in the competitors countries favor them whereas; its absence in India makes the industry to wobble behind. This has ultimately resulted in loss of skilled workmanship in the sector.

Due to lack of support from the Handicrafts Development Corporation, and the Government, many skilled artisans are leaving the handicraft industry. The artisans feel that the corporation is not interested in supporting them to market the goods made by them. Almost 90% of the handicraft items seen in the stalls of Handicraft Development Corporation are machine made. Despite the funds offered under the Deen Dayal Hathkargh Protsahan Yogana (DDHPY) scheme, for promoting handicraft products, no steps have so far been taken for any projects. Artisans believe that the corporation does not take adequate measures to provide raw materials for their products, which they are selling through the corporation outlets in the past years.

The 6 million artisans who are the backbone on the Indian handicraft industry have provided their inherent skills, and traditional craftsmanship. But, they are now leaving the industry gradually due to lack of opportunities. The Government needs to focus on creating and developing production centres to patronize the artisans. The facilities available are quite sufficient only as a primary platform. For the changing world market, they need much advanced institutional support, to keep their edge with other competing countries.

The hospitality industry continues to grow and thus there is undeniable fierce competition going on here. Establishing a business in this industry is definitely hard especially for a beginner. However, if you have the determination, dedicated employees and the right decisions, you will certainly succeed. Hospitality or service industry consists of firms that offer lodging, event planning and transportation as well as businesses like restaurants, theme parks and cruise lines. There are several activities that you have to mind here and you also have to make sure that you have the right staff that will perform different jobs such as facility maintenance, housekeeping, bartending, cooking and other direct operations. In this case, most will think that it is difficult to monitor all the tasks at the same time. However, this is not true if you have reliable hospitality industry KPI.

The hospitality industry KPI or the key performance indicators allow checking of day to day activities in your company which might seem impossible to do. With the right set of indicators, you will be able to keep track of supply and demand, the promotional needs of the company, recruitment activities and even the security requirements of your business. Depending on your organization, your hospitality or tourism industry indicators will differ according to the type of customers, the services you offer, the internal processes of the enterprise, the demands of your customers and the manufactured goods of your business. Thus, various indicators can be selected as long as they can be monitored properly.

For instance, if you are searching for KPIs in hotel management, you should take a look at the aspects that concern the success of your business the most. These include the profitability of your company, the needs of the staff and their performance and the efficiency of your processes. It is important that the hospitality industry KPI that you have chosen is right for your company and that you report on them regularly. Since you are in the service or hospitality industry, you will most likely consider measuring the size of your system. Taking the given example above, if you are operating a hotel, you will be able to monitor the system size by obtaining the number of rooms or hotels under your brand.

One of the main problems that managers face when they are choosing the hospitality industry KPI is that they find it hard to keep things at a minimum. Limiting the number of indicators can be quite a dilemma especially because there is a sea of choices for the hospitality industry KPI. Nevertheless, the trick here is to make sure that you keep yourself on a straight path. If you are managing a hotel, you should stick with just the lodging business. If you are operating a restaurant, monitor only using the tourism industry indicators that are about food service.

The good thing about the hospitality industry KPI is that it can check on the future of your company. It is not restricted to the now phase of your business. For example, you can keep track of the development pipeline of your hotel, which will measure the numbers of rooms that your hotel might have in the future.