Category Archives: Hotels

Best Western will unveil BW Premier and Executive Residency brands by 2021 in India. The brand will also unveil GLō and Aiden later in the country. Atul Jain, COO, Best Western Hotels & Resorts India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka, says, “Best Western Hotels & Resorts will aggressively seek expansion in India and other chosen markets, but will do so responsibly and efficiently.  The expansion will be spread across our brands and will include Best Western Plus, Best Western Premier, Vīb and GLō properties”. 

In a recent interview, Jaideep Dang, Managing Director, Hotels & Hospitality Business, JLL, says, “At present, Hyderabad is a booming market and is back into the reckoning. New hotels are being added yet the city remains strong. Besides this, Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram keep rising. However, Mumbai remains at the top in terms of Occupancy and RevPAR. The reason primarily remains the surge in the commercial market space.”

In a recent interview, Atul Jain, Chief Operating Officer, Best Western Hotels & Resorts India, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka, says, “Following the signing of 20 new hotels in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the group regional pipeline now features 36 hotels containing over 3,000 rooms. The new hotel signings will operate under Best Western, Best Western Plus, SureStay Plus and SureStay Hotel by Best Western. The company’s expansion will start immediately, with the opening of Best Western La Vista Pathankot followed by Best Western Plus Mohali. By the end of this year, 6 more Best Western-branded hotels are on track to open their doors. This include Best Western brand in New Delhi, Nawanshahr and Goa; Best Western Plus brand in Vizag and Gurgaon.”

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, revealed HVS ANAROCK in its recent report. It revealed that 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.

Accor will be launching two new Grand Mercure properties in India – Grand Mercure Gandhinagar GIFT City that will be launched in October and Grand Mercure Bengaluru at Gopalan Mall that will be launched in December. The Gandhinagar property will have 151 rooms and Bengaluru property will have 206 rooms.

Travelport has developed blockchain solution to enhance the hotel commission reconciliation process with IBM Services, BCD Travel and number of hotels. The blockchain technology solution aims to optimise hotel commission processing on a distributed ledger by managing reconciliation, tracking and accounting for commission payments owed from hotel chains for services purchased by travellers via booking agencies. The platform creates an accurate and shared view of the booking status and commissions, which benefits all parties concerned. Blockchain technology behaves like an online ledger with the ability to collect data, build upon that data in real-time, and then independently and securely report information to any number of parties based on permission. Following an IBM Garage engagement, Travelport and IBM Services, together with partner BCD Travel, developed an MVP solution using distributed ledger technology to streamline commission reconciliation between BCD and three high profile hotel chains. Hotel commission reconciliation processes include a range of challenges from the operational lack of audit trails driving escalations and manual data mapping, to the financial impairment of revenue forecasting, to the more commercial impact on commission flexibility and duty of care. Solving for this current friction is critical to ensure all stakeholders in a hotel transaction are duly compensated and ultimately to ensure customers receive an optimal travel experience; and, blockchain is an ideal solution to address this. Travelport and IBM are currently working in partnership with industry stakeholders to evolve the solution into an active pilot program. Sandeep Dwivedi, Chief Operating Officer at InterGlobe Technology Quotient (ITQ) commented: “Blockchain is a disruptive technology with enormous potential to improve hotel commission reconciliation process and Travelport’s blockchain solution will certainly address various challenges surrounding it. Further, as we …

The fourth edition of Global Panorama Showcase Kolkata kick-started at The Lalit Great Eastern, Kolkata with slew of announcements related to its upcoming plans. With a target of reaching out to 25 destinations with EDWIN (Educational Destination Workshop) in next five years, Harmandeep Singh Anand, Managing Director, GPS, announced new EDWIN program with Trulyy hotels at its properties in Gujarat and Rajasthan. He also announced special booking packages with Trulyy providing 30, 40 and 50 per cent discount with membership program.  According to Anand, The Oberoi hotels has also proposed a special membership plan for the GPS members. He also briefed about sustainable and responsible tourism initiatives of GPS including rain water harvesting programme, restricting single-use plastic and counselling the clients on code of conduct in hotels abroad.

Currently the Executive Chairman of roomsXML Solutions, a company he founded in 2010, Prakash Bang has penned down his globe-trotting experiences in the form of e-books. Today, he has a total of 40 e-books that are dedicated to destinations across six continents and two poles. The idea came to him while travelling for work that takes him around the world giving him an opportunity to see the world through his camera. His efforts have featured him in The Limca Book of Records for a ‘travelogue of the longest duration’ – a record that remains unbeaten since its inception in 2014. Bang speaks of his endeavour and says, “I am now away from day to day affairs of my company. Both my sons, Ruchir and Anuj are in charge and are doing a good job. With time on hand, it was possible to write about my travels. Essentially, each of these books are my personal experiences. The pictures are shot by me, as I saw them. Travellers as well as the travel trade will find the information pretty useful. Each book can be downloaded for only Rs 100 – because giving it free will undermine its value.” His e-books not only include international destinations such as Bhutan, Seoul, and Copenhagen but also Indian destinations like Varansai, Ladakh and Hampi.   

J.B. Singh, President and CEO, InterGlobe Hotels, recently disclosed that IGH will expand majorly in Tier-I cities. He says, “The standard big metros like Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru are high-growth markets with good absorption rate, not just from hospitality side, but from the aviation and commercial real-estate side as well. There is great demand from the customers to build hotels in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Gurugram. We must manage the demand where customers ask for more hotels. We have a couple of hotels under construction in Vikhroli and Thane.”

STR’s hotel pipeline data for the Asia Pacific region showed 2,109 projects accounting for 470,650 rooms in construction as of July 2019. Five countries reported more than 20,000 rooms under construction including India where 24,801 rooms, 8.4% of existing supply is under construction. China led with 244,233 rooms, which represented 9.4% of the country’s existing supply and Japan with 43,012 rooms, 6.3% of existing supply.