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InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG India) aims to become the largest mid-scale hotel operator in India and the leading operator in the upscale segment in the long term.
The company currently has 15 operational hotels in India under various brands, such as InterContinental Hotels, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express. It expects to open additional 135 hotels in the next 10-15 years.
By the end of this year, it will open a hotel under Holiday Inn Express in Chennai and another under Holiday Inn at the Aerocity in New Delhi. It plans next to open six hotels in 2014. The company said it had 57 hotels under various stages of construction, which are expected to become operational in the next 5-6 years.
Douglas Martell, Vice-President, Operations, South West Asia, IHG, said India was the third fastest growing market for the global hotel chain. “Nearly 88 per cent of our future hotel inventory will come up under the Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express brands as we believe the mid-scale market has a huge potential for growth in India in the next few years,” he said.
Martell said the company was bullish on India’s long-term prospects as the country was expected to witness the fastest growth in demand for hotel rooms over the next 20 years due to a large young population and a rapidly growing middle class. He said for the hotel chain, domestic travellers were the largest segment.
The company is focusing on building the Holiday Inn brand in the top 25 cities. “For Holiday Inn Express, too, we want to scale up the brand to win the signings war (signing up new hotels in a competitive environment) with focus on 25 cities in the next seven years,” he said.
In a bid to scale up Holiday Inn Express brand, it has signed a joint venture agreement with Duet India Hotels and recently also signed a 10-hotel management deal with Bangalore-based real estate developer Brigade. “We are open for such opportunities in the form of joint ventures or multiple hotel management deals with strong partners. Multiple hotel management deals gives us access to land parcels which are being developed into mixed land use projects by real estate developers,” said Martell.
Asked whether the company planned to introduce other brands in India, Martell said it was focused on building and scaling up its core brands in the mid-scale and upscale segments for now.
(The correspondent’s visit to Kochi was hosted by IHG India)
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