Puneet Chhatwal travel tips

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) plans to reach a portfolio of 300 hotels by 2025, it said on Tuesday when reporting its earnings.

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) is bringing back its Gateway brand from “cold storage,” but it will be a reimagined version: A full-service hotel offering in the upscale segment.

India's smallest territory, Lakshadweep, is emerging as a must-see destination, with Indian tourists and forward-thinking experiential visitors. The area made headlines following Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vacation in January when he posted multiple images of the stunning islands to promote tourism in the region. His heavy praise of Lakshadweep was construed as an attempt to lure tourists away from the Maldives. Soon after negative criticism came from a few ministers in the Maldives, an Indian "boycott" started, resulting in a 33% drop in visitors from India.

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) looks to open an average of 2 hotels per month or even more in fiscal year 2024-2025, Puneet Chhatwal, managing director and CEO of IHCL, announced during an earnings call on Friday.

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. 

As demand outpaces supply in the Indian hotels market, the asset-light Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) reported its highest-ever full year consolidated revenue and a profit after tax of $122 million — a historic first for the company.

Tata Group-owned Air India’s low-cost carrier subsidiary Air India Express has hired over 280 pilots and 250 cabin crew during a recent recruitment drive conducted across Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Approximately 300 pilots participated in the selection process conducted during the drive, the airline said. Air India Express said it has been actively focusing on strengthening its workforce since October last year, targeting vacancies for pilots and cabin crew members. In addition to the major metros, the airline has also been conducting walk-in recruitment drives in other cities and towns for cabin crew aspirants to meet the growing demand of its operations. Mainline carrier Air India also recently announced that it would be hiring more than 1,000 pilots, including captains and trainers, to support its fleet expansion plans. Air India Express’ hiring move comes during a turbulent period as crisis-hit carrier Go First becomes the second airline — after Jet Airways — in the past three years to halt operations. Recently, Go First was granted bankruptcy protection after it plunged into a financial crisis, sparked by what it called “faulty” Pratt & Whitney engines that grounded about half of its 54 Airbus A320neos.

Antitrust regulator Competition Commission of India (CCI) is scrutinizing Tata Group-owned Air India’s planned merger with Vistara over concerns about competition in the aviation sector. The watchdog has issued a show-cause notice to Air India to explain its position and asked the company for clarification on why the merger should not be investigated.

The Indian hotel sector is poised to contribute $1.5 trillion to the country’s economy by 2047, up from $65 billion in 2022, forecasts the Hotel Association of India in its “Vision 2047: Indian Hotel Industry” report.