Category Archives: Hotels

Sarovar Hotels has announced the opening of Nirvana Sarovar Portico in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. Gorakhpur is Sarovar’s 5th city in Uttar Pradesh after Agra, Jhansi, Lucknow, Vaishali and Vrindavan. The hotel features 67 rooms including suites, with all modern amenities. The hotel also includes conferencing and banquet spaces and facilities for up to 350 guests. Ajay K. Bakaya, Managing Director, Sarovar Hotels, said “This beautiful, new hotel is a fantastic addition to our growing portfolio in Uttar Pradesh. With its significant development, Gorakhpur is an emerging destination with rising number of visitors from overseas and across the country. It is an important location for us to further tap the market and grow our business. This is set to be one of the best hotel in the city and will cater to the needs of Corporate, Groups, Leisure and Conferences.” Sarovar Hotels is targeting to have 100 hotels under its portfolio in the near future. Expected openings in 2019 include hotels in Bangalore, Bihar, Goa, Gujrat, Mumbai, Punjab, Tanzania, Uttarakhand.  

The Election Commission of India has levied a ban on serving alcohol after 11 pm which has pushed many tourists away. Concerned over the impact of the time restrictions and inflow of tourists, hoteliers in Goa submitted a representation to the Director, Department of Tourism seeking relief from the ECI on the same. The representation stressed on the need for a relaxation in timings as the tourism season is currently at its peak and is expecting a further surge for the weekend festivities. In November last year, the state government made a draft public for comments- Tourism Policy and Masterplan by KPMG Advisory Services and Tourism and Leisure Advisory Services. Post which, the stakeholders of tourism industry were upset since there wasn’t much for small-scale restaurateurs and businesses while the big players were taken more into consideration. In the future, tourism officials want the state to plan a roadmap in such a way that doesn’t hamper the inflow of tourists. Goa has concluded its polls on April 23 and Panaji assembly by-poll will be held on May 19.

The Tata group has signed a formal agreement with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) for operating Taj Mansingh, New Delhi. Earlier, the hotel was given to the Tata group in 1978 on a 33-year lease, which ended in 2011. The company had since been given nine temporary extensions. The Tata group has retained the lease at a license fees of Rs 7.03 crore per month including GST. Earlier, they were paying Rs 3.94 crore per month as license fees. From April 11, NDMC will get 32.5 per cent more revenue as against about 17.25 per cent. “This is an achievement for us that we could finally plan the public auction, settle the legal litigation, auction the property and finally implement it on the ground,” a senior NDMC official said. (Source: PTI)

Radisson Hotel Group is on track to reach the landmark of opening its 100th hotel in India this year. New hotels set to open within the next 12 months include India’s first Radisson RED hotel, located in Mohal. Zubin Saxena, Managing Director and Vice President Operations, South Asia, Radisson Hotel Group says, “This is a very exciting point in my journey. We are excited about Radisson Red Mohali, which is our new lifestyle, select service brand. It will be a 160-room property and is currently in the advanced stages of construction. We are looking to launch it in the next 12 months. This will be the first Radisson Red in the Asia Pacific region and in India. We have also recently signed a 350-room Radisson Red in Noida which will open in four to five years.”

Best Western Hotels & Resorts has launched its new SureStay Plus Hotel Brand in India with the opening of a first SureStay Plus hotel in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The hotel offers 57 rooms across three categories and eight suites. “We are delighted to unveil SureStay Plus Hotel by Best Western Indore, an exciting midscale brand that will redefine the hotel landscape in Indore.,” said Atul Jain, Best Western’s Chief Operating Officer for India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. “By combining the ease and affordability of midscale hotels with the international standards of a global chain, SureStay Hotel Group is sure to appeal to business and leisure travellers alike”.

Mandeep Lamba, President, HVS ANAROCK-South Asia, in an exclusive interview with Tourism Breaking News, said, “Going forward we are headed towards interesting times in the hospitality space. In fact, our recent study shows, 2020 could be the year of the highest occupancy ever witnessed in the Indian hospitality industry. The industry is finally accepting the fact that we are on a start of the upside. We are observing a trend we were long waiting for. We have seen industry go through troubled seven years on a downturn. Finally, everyone is relieved that we are finally going to see an upturn.

In the hotel industry, leisure properties in India continued to outperform their urban counterparts largely as a result of steady demand and higher average rates, as per a latest research by Hotelivate. The RevPAR of Rs 9,235 clocked in 2017-18 by the leisure sub-set was 1.6 times that of the urban sample and 2.4 times the national average. The strong year-on-year performance of the former clearly points towards a healthy demand for such hotels in the country, making investment in leisure properties perceivably more viable than previously thought. The peaks and troughs in demand in leisure locations is smoothening with creative promotions, social events, corporate off-sites, MiCE and group travel serving as fillers. Moreover, the low reliance of leisure hotels on RFPs from corporates that are relatively more sensitive to economic and trade conditions, make them less vulnerable to price wars.

More than 50 per cent of Indian travellers budgeted USD75-150 per room per night for leisure travel, reports a study by CAPA India and Expedia titled ‘The Inflection Point for Indian Outbound Travel’. Hotels have been the standard option for the Indian traveller in the past, however, travellers are now exploring other accommodation options, with 38% of survey respondents having rented a villa or apartment while travelling overseas. This has been made more accessible by online platforms such as Airbnb and others, which offer homestays. Traditionally at short-haul destinations, Indian travellers spend one-third of their holiday budget on accommodation. Indians visiting Singapore spent around 35% of their trip cost on accommodation, compared to Chinese and Indonesians who spent only about 18% in 2015. For medium to long-haul destinations, the spend on accommodation can increase to up to half of the total trip budget. Indians visiting Mauritius in 2016, spent around 56% of expenses on accommodation while those visiting Switzerland spent around 48% of their budget on accommodation. International leisure travellers from India are drawn mostly from high and upper-middle income economic segments. They are used to a certain standard of living and expect similar conditions and conveniences when travelling. Given the high quality of hotels in India, there is an assumption that equivalent levels of luxury and service will be available overseas, which is not always the case. Leading hotel chains have shared that they find it difficult to replicate their customer proposition at overseas destinations because of the much higher cost of labour and different service cultures. This can result in expectations being disappointed.

Hard Rock International continues intensifying its India presence with the announcement of Hard Rock Hotel Bangalore, slated to open in Fall 2020. Joining Hard Rock Hotel Goa, the second Hard Rock Hotel in India will be located in the city of Bangalore. “The city of Bangalore is full of culture and beauty and is the perfect location for our second property in India,” said Todd Hricko, senior vice president and head of global hotel development for Hard Rock International. “We are pleased to work with Convention Hotels India Private Limited who share in our vision, integrity and dedication to quality.”

According to a recent report by HVS ANAROCK, the significant jump in 2018 and 2017 hotel openings over 2016 is partly a result of rebranding, the most notable being the migration of a 14 hotel portfolio with almost 2000 keys owned by SAMHI hotels in key locations, to Holiday Inn Express rebranded openings accounted for 24% of the openings in 2018. The year 2019 is expected to outpace 2018 with a total of 105 new branded hotel openings with a total key count of 8,574 keys. The effort to open new hotels, big or small, requires hotel operators to coordinate large amounts of preopening effort. So, while domestic operators opened 65 hotels of the total 134 openings in 2018, which represents nearly half of all the openings, in terms of key counts, domestic operators represented only 32% of the total 7,215 keys.