Bengaluru and Ahmedabad to Get New U.S. Consulates

Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands, together making up nearly 70% of InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)’s portfolio in India, are going to remain the “driver of growth” in the market, said the company’s South West Asia Managing Director, Sudeep Jain.

Air India has entered into an interline partnership with Bangkok Airways that will allow the Tata Group-owned airline’s passengers connections to 10 Southeast Asian destinations beyond the Thai capital. 

A large part of India travels by bus and rail. And taking advantage of the country’s significant leap in online train ticketing is Ixigo — including its subsidiary ConfirmTkt — which leads the way with nearly 50% market share of India’s online travel. 

Travel fintech start-up SanKash has observed a surge in travel bookings from September 8 to 10 as the capital city of New Delhi prepares for a scheduled closure for the G20 Summit. 

Antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Tata group’s plan to merge its full-service carriers Air India and Vistara. 

Hotel occupancy and room rates have bounced back to pre-pandemic numbers, primarily due to the soaring demand for the G20 Summitto be held in New Delhi on September 9 to 10. 

The Google pages of many hotels — including premier properties — in the Himalayan hill towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal have been defaced for fraud ahead of the holiday travel rush. Anybody looking for hotels in Darjeeling using the search engine will come across prominent photographs containing the hackers’ phone numbers over a section displaying pictures of rooms and amenities. “We have been lately facing incidents where fraudsters are posting their mobile numbers with payment options to book not only our properties but also several others in the region. We are continually monitoring this and flagging all such posts as ‘spam’ for Google to review and have them removed,” said Viraj Oberoi, director of Elgin Hotels & Resorts, a luxury heritage hotels chain with properties in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim. Cyber miscreants are removing hotel details and creating their own profiles with personal contact details, said Sandipan Ghosh, general secretary of regional travel trade body Eastern Himalayas Travel and Tour Operators’ Association. “Surprisingly, they’re also luring customers to pay in advance while knocking off the goods and services tax charge,” Ghosh said. In India, the goods and services tax on hotels range anywhere between 12-18 percent, depending on the pricing. Customers, while trying to book hotels online for Darjeeling, have been duped to pay advance amounts to bank accounts which don’t belong to the owners of the accommodations. “We’re in touch with the cyber cell department to track such incidents closely and take action accordingly,” Ghosh added. 

India will invest around $12 billion over the next two years in airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet the booming demand for air travel. The country aims to increase the number of airports from the present 148 to 220 by 2025, for which private builders will contribute roughly $9 billion, with the balance coming from the government-run Airports Authority of India. It entails new terminal construction, greenfield projects, and refurbishment of existing buildings, including old military airfields from the colonial era, as per a Bloomberg report. “We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” said the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at the ongoing CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi. Scindia said passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million today, and Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700. Additionally, India has eased leasing rules for airlines to lease more aircraft to address aircraft shortages as travel rebounds from the pandemic. He also highlighted how India had tweaked its airplane leasing program to enable airlines to add more aircraft to meet passenger demand, including more “wet leasing,” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes. Tata Group-owned Air India last month announced a record order for 470 jets and is due to take another 25 leased aircraft.

Travel exchange company EbixCash — the Indian arm of insurance software company Ebix — has been granted regulatory approval for its long-awaited initial public offering (IPO). The IPO is expected to raise between $732 million to $975 million, making it one of the largest IPOs in the financial services sector in India. The company has already filed a draft red herring prospectus, but the IPO is still subject to the necessary approvals, market conditions, and other factors. In the run-up to the anticipated IPO, EbixCash had filed its prospectus with the Indian stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on March 10, 2022 after CEO Robin Raina declared on the company’s quarterly earnings call that EbixCash would file its prospectus “imminently.” Ebix declared its intent to raise $787 million via the IPO, while retaining a significant majority stake in EbixCash. While EbixCash operates in several segments — payment solutions, travel, financial technologies, business processing outsourcing services and startup initiatives — it receives over 80 percent of its revenue from the payments services business. Under this business, the company offers domestic remittance, forex, international remittance and prepaid cards/gift cards. It largely generates revenue based on commissions and transaction fees from providing these services. 

Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) — the company belonging to Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani — is set to foray into the hospitality industry under its new arm Reliance SOU, engaging in hotels, resorts, and service apartments that will provide short-term lodging facilities. According to the details available with the registrar of companies, the company is planning to develop hotels and resorts near the Statue of Unity in the west Indian state of Gujarat’s Kevadia. In a stock exchange filing, Reliance said that it had incorporated a wholly-owned subsidiary called Reliance SOU (RSOUL) with the intention of developing commercial properties. However, it did not elaborate on whether it would manage those properties directly, an Indian daily said. Reliance Industrial Investments and Holdings Limited (RIIHL) — a wholly owned subsidiary of the listed parent RIL — had earlier bought a 73.4 percent stake in the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York for $98 million. It also acquired Stoke Park Country Club, another UK-based hotel, for $69 million. 

Thailand-based Minor Hotels will launch its luxury Anantara brand in India with Anantara Jaipur Hotel in the north Indian state of Rajasthan, scheduled to open in the fourth quarter of 2023. The hotel will feature 150 guest rooms and suites, including four terrace suites with private plunge pools, and a 160-square-meter royal suite with a large terrace and private pool. Besides bars and restaurants, other facilities will include a spa, beauty salon, gym, semi-outdoor pool, kids’ club, and event spaces. The hotel will be able to cater to weddings of up to 2,500 guests with its collection of indoor and outdoor venues. “Jaipur is one of India’s most vibrant destinations, with a huge destination wedding potential, and I look forward to working with (owner) Ajay Gangwal and his team to launch our first Anantara in India, which is a significant strategic step for Minor Hotels,” said Dillip Rajakarier, CEO of Minor Hotels. Minor Hotels currently has a portfolio of more than 530 hotels and resorts in 56 countries across its brands, which include Anantara, Avani, Elewana, Oaks, NH, nhow and Tivoli. In other developments, Hilton announced that it, too, has an interest in Jaipur, where it will debut its luxury brand, the Waldorf Astoria. Radisson, too, is thinking luxury, and announced on Wednesday that it would be debuting its luxury lifestyle brand, Radisson Collection in India with the signing of the first hotel in Hyderabad.

In a much-needed impetus for adventure tourism, India would be looking to focus on developing infrastructure for this segment, Tourism Minister G Kishan Reddy said recently. Reddy said India aims to be the a top adventure tourism destination. The second tourism working group meeting under G20 hosted by India’s tourism ministry began with a side event, a panel discussion on “Adventure tourism as a vehicle for achieving sustainable development goals.” Delivering the keynote, Reddy highlighted how India’s topography is conducive for a variety of adventure activities like camping, paragliding, hot air ballooning, river cruising, sailing, snorkeling and wildlife safari. “We have a 4,349-mile coastline, 70 percent of the Himalayas, about 435 miles of rivers, sand desert and cold desert in Ladakh…all of which provide opportunities for a variety of adventure activities for both domestic and foreign tourists,” Reddy said. Talking about the national adventure tourism strategy framed last year, Reddy said it would focus on initiatives like state ranking criteria for adventure tourism sites, a model adventure tourism law, development of mega trails, development of adventure activity guidelines, adventure tourism rescue centers, and development of website and social media pages for adventure tourism.