Category Archives: Hotels

Hospitality industry in India has stringent policies which is detrimental to the sector. Mandeep Lamba, President(South Asia), HVS Anarock, further elaborating on his recent report, states that given limited supply of suitable land parcels for hospitality projects and prohibitive costs of the same, the government must relax FSI norms in key metros to upto 5 times the size of land so as to allow a larger built up space in the designated land parcel. in countries like the US, prime business areas such as Manhattan in New York, could have up to 15 FSI allowing for adequate offset for the cost of land through larger revenue generating built up areas.

Sabre Corporation and Accor have announced that they intend to create the first unified central reservation (CR) and property management (PM) platform for the global hospitality industry. In collaboration with Accor, Sabre intends to develop a new full service property management capability and enrich its existing central reservation and limited service property management systems. These capabilities will combine within a new unified cloud-native, highly-flexible platform that will be built for and available to hoteliers across all property classes and geographic regions. In this context, Accor would be Sabre’s newest enterprise hospitality customer, adopting Sabre’s industry-leading SynXis Central Reservation system and, ultimately, the new global technology platform for all of its hospitality brands and geographies. “We are thrilled to be collaborating with Accor and look forward to redefining the guest experience together. We know our customers have historically had limited options in this area, and we are taking the lead to deliver the solutions that hoteliers have repeatedly told us they both want and need,” said Sean Menke, president and CEO of Sabre Corporation. “Once developed, this offering will power a new generation of retailing, distribution and fulfillment solutions that will enable hotels to drive revenue growth beyond traditional sources and offer unique personalized services to their guests around the world.” With a diverse portfolio of brands from luxury to economy and over 50 years of experience in the industry, Accor offers a unique perspective on what guests want and hotels need. “Sabre shares our vision of a future where hoteliers are able to offer guests an unforgettable, personalized experience that goes beyond simply being a place or service,” said Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and CEO for Accor. “Partners like Sabre are …

Onefinerate.com gives its travel agent partners and M!CE bookers easy and direct access to hotels that match their event criteria. RFP is sent instantly to the selected hotels for them, with a prompt, to respond to the booker at the earliest. The OFR operations team ensures that the RFPs are responded by the hotel partners at the earliest. This leads to a shorter ‘selling cycle’ thereby helping both parties to close deals in a shorter window of time. Incremental sales & revenue for hotels with minimal use of their resources adds to their bottom line and at the same time giving the bookers an opportunity secure business faster. Onefinerate.com or OFR is one-of-its-kind travel marketplace designed for both B2C and B2B business. It addresses the key pain points of both the M!CE bookers & hotels like lead generation, access & faster response times. With deep domain knowledge, the OFR team has developed complex algorithms that identify & match the bookers requirements with the availability & rates offered by hotels. With the expanded distribution network, Hotels discover Bookers that they had never worked with and Bookers begin business with Hotels where they had no relationships.

According to a recent report by HVS, India ranks amongst the countries with the highest cost of capital for the hospitality industry. Lending norms for the industry are extremely stringent with interest rates ranging between 11% and 14% for borrowings as against an average of 4% to 5% in most developed economies. Given the higher cost of servicing debt, the quantum of debt available to the sector averages at 50% of the total project cost further restricting the capital available for hotel development. And finally, the cherry on this cake is the short tenure for repayment of debt which averages at circa 10 to 12 years including the construction period moratorium. Assuming a three-year construction moratorium and a three-year period for hotel revenues to stabilise, the effective repayment term ranges from 4 to 6 years causing severe stress on hotel owners and operators. Given the cyclical nature of the business, if the hotel enters the market in a down cycle phase, it is almost certain to head towards becoming an NPA as has been evident from the last cyclical downturn.

After overcoming a major civic and tourism infrastructure challenge post Cyclone Fani, Odisha Tourism is looking to prepare a blueprint for developing its most-visited tourist destinations with a focus on creating a land bank for hotel projects. Vishal K Dev, IAS, Secretary, Odisha Tourism, said, “One of the challenges that Odisha Tourism faced was creating a land bank for developing premium tourism and hospitality infrastructure. We are looking to consolidate an investment-ready land bank of over 2,000 acres for the sector in the coming years.” He added that this plots of land will be identified near all major touristic sites. Land banks will be created in areas close to Chilika, Bhitarkanika, Similipal, Hirakud, Satkosia and sea coastline. Dev added that the tourism board had already developed and launched its Marine Drive Eco Retreat at the Ramachandi Beach near the grand Konark Sun Temple. “It has been developed as an environmentally sustainable model incorporating best practices in material utilisation, zero liquid and sewerage discharge and holistic waste management. It has been envisioned as eastern India’s first glamping set up. Scheduled from 14 December 2019 to 31 January 2020, the Eco Retreat is a unique experience of glamping in 50 luxury cottages along with adventure and water sports activities. We plan to replicate the Eco Retreat model at suitable times of the year on prominent beach stretches along our 482 km coastline, each having its own unique experience,” Dev added.

Twenty14 Holdings, hospitality investment arm of LuLu Group International, is developing two high-profile properties in Bengaluru at an investment of Rs 800 crore that will open in 2020 and 2021, respectively. Adeeb Ahamed, Managing Director, Twenty14 Holdings, says, “We currently have three projects in India, one of which is already operational – the first Tribute Collection by Marriott called Port Muziris in Kochi. The other two are brownfield projects under development in Bengaluru – one is near the airport and the other is in the Electronic City. One of them will be ready by 2020 and the other by Q1 2021.” The two Bengaluru properties are at a combined investment of up to Rs 800 crore, Ahamed reveals while the one in Kochi was at an investment of Rs 52 crore. “We are looking to expand in India and are in final stages of negotiations for other projects across India. We are looking at one resort property and one hill station property but we haven’t finalised yet. We are also looking at Dharamshala and Hyderabad as potential destinations,” he shares. Twenty14 Holdings was established in 2014 and aims to become a billion-dollar investment company by 2025. It is an asset-heavy hospitality investment arm of LuLu Group International and already has a few properties operating in different parts of the world. It is now planning to expand further in India and is looking for appropriate hospitality partners.

Sarovar Hotels and Resorts has announced its Eco-friendly initiative in collaboration with MakeMyTrip towards sustainable and responsible tourism in partnership with MakeMyTrip Foundation, a public charitable trust that supports sustainable tourism. On every stay at Sarovar Hotels booked through MMT website, the hotel will contribute Rs.5/- in addition to that an identical contribution requested from guests, which will then be used towards sustainable tourism and betterment of ecological balance. Anil Madhok, Executive Chairman, Sarovar Hotels, says “We are delighted to partner with MakeMy Trip for such a great initiative and will do our utmost to contribute to sustainability through adopting a proactive environmental policy. We are conscious of the world we’ll leave behind for future generations”.

The existing supply in Delhi is expected to experience an increase of approximately 768 keys over the next 1-2 years, reveals JLL’s report titled Delhi NTR-Charting Delhi’s Tourism Potential. Delhi currently has a total room inventory of 16,912 rooms, spread across more than 80 branded hotels. Although the growth of new supply is moderate with Delhi’s position as a mature and established hospitality market, there are ten hotels in various stages of development, which are expected to add more than 1,800 keys over the next 3-4 years. The bulk of the upcoming supply coming from the Upscale segment and luxury segment.

Talking about the group’s aggressive growth in the Indian market, Ajay Bakaya, Managing Director of Sarovar Hotels & Resorts, said “We are looking forward to open around 10-15 hotels in 2020 and I hope to crack 100-hotel mark by the end of this year. As far as our international growth is concerned, I think Middle East is where Sarovar wants to be for the simple reason, I can source business and talent from both Africa and India.” Some of the locations where Sarovar will open its properties include Greater Noida, Dalhousie, Latur, Udaipur, Panipat, Bodhgaya etc.

HVS Ease of Doing Business report has revealed that around 70 licences & approvals are needed to open and operate a hotel in India, while only 45 are required in China. However, in Singapore, only 26 licenses and approvals are needed for opening and operating a hotel. The study states licensing requirements in other countries are not as complex as in India. The number of licences needed to operate a hotel in India are far too many and vary across states.