Oyo’s Survey Ranks Goa and Manali as Top Destinations

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. 

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. 

Ryanair on Monday posted its largest ever after-tax profit for its key summer season and said it expected very strong passenger and fare growth for years to come as customers switch from higher-cost rivals.

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.

Reports suggest that India-based budget hotel operator and aggregator Oyo will be reducing its Initial Public Offering (IPO) size by about two-thirds. The company is likely to file a fresh document for its IPO as soon as this week, according to a Bloomberg report. The company had initially filed to go public in October 2021. In December, India’s capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), had advised Oravel Stays, the parent company of Oyo, to refile the draft prospectus, updating all the relevant sections such as risk factors, key performing indicators, outstanding litigations and basis for offer. Oyo’s last submission to SEBI was the updated financial results of the first half of financial year 2022-23. Updating its draft red herring prospectus with results for the first half of the 2023 financial year in November, Oyo had reported that its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization for the second quarter grew eight times from $860,000 in the first quarter to $7 million primarily driven by a 23 percent quarter-on-quarter rise in gross booking value per hotel. However, speaking at a town hall on Monday, Oyo Founder and Group CEO Ritesh Agarwal told employees that Oyo expects its revenue in the financial year 2023 to be more than $692.5 million, up 19 percent from 2022’s $581 million. Agarwal attributed the company’s better financials to sustained growth in India, Indonesia, the U.S., and the UK, and relevant optimization and synergies in its European vacation homes business. He outlined that Oyo’s key focus areas this year would be on profit after tax along with consistent momentum in earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, achieving cash flow positive in financial year 2024, cost efficiency and improving contribution margins, and making storefront additions. 

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.

Before the pandemic, solo travelers accounted for roughly a third of hotel bookings by inbound travelers. But a push for social interaction and India’s growing reputation as a couples getaway has since led families and couples to take a majority share of inbound bookings, according to travel tech firm RateGain Travel Technologies’ India Inbound Travel Trends report. Family hotel bookings have increased from 4 percent in the first quarter of 2019 to 10.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023. France and Spain are the top origins for families visiting India. Solo bookings have significantly declined in recent years — from 41.6 percent in the first quarter of 2019 to only 6.6 percent in the first quarter of 2023. The report studies travelers’ behavior from nine countries, including the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Russia, Germany and France. We wonder where the inbound business travelers have gone. Here’s another startling statistic from the RateGain report: the share of female travelers visiting India from developed countries has increased to 49 percent over the past five years. While the share was a little more than 33 percent of all travelers between January and March 2018, it rose by 50 percent to occupy 49 percent of the total share of international travelers between January and March 2023.