Category Archives: Hotels

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.

Domestic hotel operators dominated signings over international operators with the ratio of 68:32 in the first half (H1) of this year, revealed the Hotel Momentum India (HMI) report released by JLL. The report revealed that 36 per cent of new signings are conversions of old hotels. Also, it was seen that Gujarat had the highest number of branded hotel signings (1593) amongst all states, while West Bengal had highest number of branded hotel openings (926) from January to June, 2019.

Almost all markets in India witnessed an increase in Average Daily Rate (ADR) of hotels in the first half of 2019 except for Ahmedabad.  Bengaluru recorded the highest ADR percentage change of 9.3 per cent in this period over the same period last year, followed by Hyderabad at 9.2%, and then Jaipur at 6.7% The figures were revealed by JLL in a report titled Hotel Momentum India (HMI) that gave the performance report of hospitality industry in 11 markets across India.

Talking about the association of InterGlobe Hotels with brands besides ibis, J.B. Singh, President and CEO, InterGlobe Hotels, says, “Besides ibis, we are also looking at Novotel. We have one under construction now in Bengaluru and are not averse to the idea of doing more properties. But it all depends on the opportunity the market offers. But we are pretty sure, we will come up with a few more.”

“This decision of the government will help the people of Jammu and Kashmir the most because It is estimated that almost 50-60% of total population of J&K is directly and/or indirectly engaged in hospitality, tourism or related ancillary related activities, says, Gurbaxish Singh Kohli, Vice President, The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India. According to him, tourism contributes about 15% to the state GDP. “Till now, despite being a leading industry of J&K, concrete steps of its economic impact on state are still lacking. This move will bring in more investment in all sectors, more industry movements, more private educational institutions, more jobs and more revenue will eventually come by, giving the otherwise bogged down state a huge impetus. Despite Kashmir ticking all the right boxes as a Hospitality & Tourism magnet, its presence and business in the state is dismal. Poverty and dependency on almost non-existent hospitality and tourism, except only in a couple of cities or areas lead the citizens to be misdirected towards nefarious activities which would now be to a large extent stand eradicated, he adds.