Art Deco Tours in Mumbai

Concept

Bombay has the second largest number of art deco buildings after Miami. However, unlike Miami where an entire precinct was restored making it an international tourist attraction, here we do little to preserve our heritage. But there is a lot of interest amongst tourists to visit and learn more about these beautiful buildings. This is an existing need gap that is not currently being tapped. There is a scope for tour operators to start dedicated art deco tours.


What is Art Deco.

The style we now call Art Deco originated in Europe in the early years of the 20th Century, and its heyday was from 1920 to 1940. It became widely known following the great Exposition des Arts Modernes Decoratifs et Industriels, held in Paris in 1925 and from which its name was ultimately derived. By the late 1930s it was in its streamlined phase and after World War 2, the International Style, devoid of all decoration, held sway. Not until the late 1960s did people begin to rediscover it and take it seriously.

Art Deco expressed all the vigor and optimism of the roaring twenties, and the idealism and escapism of the grim thirties.

Its decorative themes are:
• Sunbursts and fountains - representing the dawn of a new modern age.
• The Skyscraper shape - symbolic of the 20th century.
• Symbols of speed, power and flight - the exiting new developments in transport and communications.
• Geometric shapes - representing the machine and technology which it was thought would solve all our problems.
• The new woman - reveling in her recently won social freedoms.
• Breaking the rules - cacophonous jazz, short skirts and hair, shocking dances.
• Ancient cultures - for oddly enough, there was a fascination with the civilizations of Egypt and Central America.
All of these themes are represented on the buildings of Mumbai.


Art Deco & Mumbai

During the Art Deco era, Bombay grew into an existing and vibrant commercial hub, not unlike New York. Posed between past and future, the city emerged internationally while still the crown of the British Raj.

Art Deco appeared in India when Indian royal families and entrepreneurs and merchants of the widely travelled educated upper middle class, eager to adopt contemporary trends in western culture, began to assume its sophistication in dress, furnishings, and architectural design.
When the new land was created under the Backbay Land Reclamation scheme, the modern style of architecture precisely expressed the requisite optimism.

The city’s first Art Deco districts of Churchgate and Marine Drive have the densest concentrations of Art Deco architecture in the city. The architectural design borrowed imagery from the new age, incorporating nautical details of steamship lines, aerodynamic designs of the car, train, and airplane, influences from Egyptian and Classical art, Cubism, industrialism and Hollywood films.


Primary Survey

A qualitative primary survey of 50 foreign tourists showed that 70% were interested in the history of the city. Most of them were interested in the city’s architecture, but knew of only the major architectural structures like Gateway, CST Terminus and Eros Cinema.
The survey also revealed that foreign tourists especially the backpackers were averse to the run off the mill packaged tour but were really interested in tours that could be customized. Also 30 respondents said that they liked walking around the city, however many said that the crowd on the roads was a problem.


Art Deco tours in other parts of the World

Miami
Miami Beach's Art Deco District is the first 20th-century neighborhood to be recognized by the National Register of Historic Places, with 800 structures of historical significance, most built between 1923 and 1943. Over the last twenty five years, Miami Beach has regenerated itself into an economically thriving cultural urban nexus through its historic preservation of Art Deco architecture.
The Miami Design Preservation League (MDPL) offer a wide variety of tours, including guided walking tours, guided bike tours, self-guided tours on an iPod or cell phone, and private tours as well.

Napier
Napier, New Zealand, was rebuilt in the early 1930s following a massive Richter 7.8 Earthquake. Subsequent fires destroyed most of its commercial heart. By the end of the decade, Napier was the newest city on the globe.
The city has a variety of buildings in the styles of the 1930s - Stripped Classical, Spanish Mission, and above all Art Deco, the style of the 20th Century. And Napier's Art Deco is unique, with Maori motifs and the buildings of Louis Hay, admirer of the great Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Art Deco trust operates Walking tours, Bus tours, Self guided tours and self drive tours.

New York
In New York, the Art Deco style evolved through a series of Manhattan skyscrapers into the city’s chief architectural language. Following a massive reawakening of interest in them during the 1970s, New York’s Deco buildings today survive as prized remnants of a distant yet modern past that still help define the city’s visual identity.
New York like Mumbai does not have a quality tour dedicated towards its Art Deco Architecture.

Mumbai
THE BOMBAY HERITAGE WALKS group has been organising walking tours around the city since April 1999. The heritage walks aim to raise the awareness of the people of Mumbai and visitors, about the city’s architecture and heritage monuments.

Business Plan
Based on the primary survey and after analyzing the tours offered by other cities, I propose that for Mumbai a self guided art deco tour would makes good business sense.

SELF-GUIDED AUDIO TOURS
The tourist can take a tour at their own pace with an iPod-based audio tour and map. They can choose from four languages: English, German, French and Spanish. The tour can be offered daily from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm. The tour should not take more than about 90 minutes, but the tourists can go at their own pace.

Similar to the iPod-based audio tour, the tourist can call in and listen to the audio on their own cell phone, along with a map they can print from the operators’ web site. The price for the tour could be around Rs 200 to 300. The only cost of this tour would be the development cost of the software. Information regarding the Art Deco buildings is available from the Mumbai Heritage Council for free. Thus the tour is a profit generating one.

The tour could also target other segments like architecture students, architect’s associations, school students, photographers.
The tours while being profitable to the operator would continue in the efforts to raise the awareness about the architectural marvels of the city.

The tour would have to be marketed aggressively on the tour operator’s website, on the lonely planet guide book and websites referred by tourists. The tour could also be integrated into the Mumbai festival.