Category Archives: Hotels

Puneet Dhawan, the newly-appointed Senior VP Operations at Accor India & South Asia, has said the group will continue to grow its network in India. He adds, “The 20th ibis will be launched in Mumbai with the ibis Vikhroli, in the middle of next year. We are also looking forward to introduce Raffles Udaipur early next year, and will be adding Novotel Chandigarh soon.”

Puneet Dhawan, Senior VP Operations, Accor India & South Asia, has revealed that Accor will be launching a new campaign ‘For the love of travel, for the love of now’ aimed at the domestic market. “It focuses on whether someone wants to work from a hotel, a vacation package, or weekend stay. We need to understand the demands and requirements of our guests. Some of them are looking for all-inclusive packages even in city hotels, where they can just stay in the hotel, enjoy all their meals and services in the property,” he shares.

Expanding its portfolio in Rajasthan, Leela Hotels has announced its first hotel in Jaipur after signing a management agreement with Tulsi Palace Resorts Group for operating the property which used to be a JW Marriot. The existing hotel will undergo product and service enhancements and will be rebranded upon completion of the renovation by early 2021.  

Mandeep Singh Lamba, President (South Asia), HVS ANAROCK, has said, “Our prediction is that we should reach pre-pandemic occupancy level around the 3rd quarter of 2022, and RevPar level at 3rd quarter of 2023. Bounce back will start in the middle of next year. As standards of medical fraternity will rise somewhere in the next year, most of the people will be inoculated and hopefully some vaccine will be there,” he said at a recent webinar.

The Hotel & Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI) thanks the BMC and the Government of Maharashtra for the 3-month waiver on property tax for the industry. However, it has requested to grant waiver to all hotels as well as restaurants for a six-month period, during which they were asked to remain shut. Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, President, HRAWI, adds, “We have not been paid for the cost of operation borne by us towards quarantining essential workers.”

JB Singh, President & CEO, InterGlobe Hotels, has said that to drive the industry where we want to go, big policy intervention is needed. “One cannot drive policy intervention without changing the structure. I think the policy must have something that can do transformational change,” he said while speaking at CAPA India Webinar.

Strengthening their presence in the North, Cygnett Group of Hotels and Resorts have launched their First Hotel in Punjab— Cozzet Stay Amritsar, with 40 rooms, which is located about 400 meters from the Golden Temple.

Indian travel technology company, Qtech Software and AI-based SaaS start-up Vervotech have entered in a strategic partnership to provide Vervotech’s UNICA – hotel mapping and room mapping platform – as an integrated solution within Qtech’s travel ERP platform. Customers of Qtech Software will now have the option to choose a mapping solution of their choice.

Mandeep S Lamba, President (South Asia), HVS ANAROCK, during a webinar, has advised hotel owners in India to not sell right now. “This is not a great time to sell. But if your cash flows are not holding out and you have no other way of managing it, then there is no option but to sell. Other than that, I would advise everybody to hold on because valuations will be a little depressed if you sell now. So the best advice I can give hotel owners is that if you have the ability to manage your cash flows for the next 12 months, then just hold on,” he advises.

In today’s FHRAI webinar with Sanjeev Sanyal, Principal Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance, Government of India suggested FHRAI to put forth their general problems along with other Associations like CII and FICCI. The main problem that Association addressed pertains to restructuring of loans and extending the moratorium period. They also said that onetime restructuring which was allowed till March 31 is not taken very seriously. Sanyal said that the restructuring guidelines addressed in KV Kamanth Committee will not be considered in a normal account, banks may not be taking the guidelines seriously but RBI is. Plus, he suggested that it is important to focus on the schemes that are already existing in the framework and push it forward. Association also requested that moratorium should continue until the situation is better and banks could get a solution. They also mentioned that Amitabh Kant is making some progress in deal with Saudi Arabia for a new credit line. To which Sanyal said that funds is not a problem, economy is doing good, there is liquidity in the market, the task is how to leverage it.