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Eyeing a slice of India’s growing mid-market hotel pie, global hospitality company Wyndham Hotel Group is set to launch its new brand Wyndham Garden.
“We will be looking at introducing mid-market full-service brand Wyndham Garden in the Indian market. We want to launch it in the next six-eight months,” Deepika Arora, Regional Vice President-Eurasia, Wyndham Hotel Group, told BusinessLine .
In India, the group currently has brands such as Ramada Plaza, Howard Johnson’s, Days, Ramada Encore, out of its 16 brands globally. “India is growing towards mid-market so Wyndham Garden is a great offering in that respect.
“It is a typical business or a leisure destination hotel. It is similar to Ramada but with a different look and feel. It will work well in a metro or leisure destination,” she added.
The company has 3,000 keys across 26 hotels in India and 5,000 keys across 41 hotels under construction. About 60 per cent of its new openings are in tier II cities and the rest in tier I.
On whether the company is looking to launch any other brands here, she said: “We would rather push existing brands Howard Johnson and Days brands. Ramada Encore is a cookie-cutter brand which we would rather promote than getting another brand and then work on its promotion.”
The company, which has expanded in India using the franchise model, unlike other global players which have grown through management contracts, is now also looking at the latter option.
“We’ve done fairly well in the franchise model. We have grown from eight hotels to 26 in the last five years. Today, we are in a position where we are far more equipped to offer a management solution to a hotel owner compared to six years ago,” she said.
While the hotels currently in the pipeline will continue to be in the franchise model, the company is looking at offering management contracts too.
“We will look at tier I markets or a good leisure destination for the management contact model,” Arora added.
Brand image Globally, the hospitality company is working on the transformation of its brand image in order to make it customer-friendly. The brand will revisit the look and feel of properties as well as taglines across all Wyndham brands.
“Our websites have undergone a transformation. The details will be out when we have our owner conference in September,” Arora said.
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