Scent of growth for Indian hotels as the good times check in
₹70,000 buy you? A month’s rent in a 3-BHK in a south Delhi apartment or a 1-BHK in Mumbai. But in some hotels, that money may not be enough even for a night’s stay. Take five-star resorts in most parts of the country right now, like AmanBagh, a sprawling property in an obscure location in Ajabgarh, in Rajasthan’s Alwar district.
Planning well ahead will still cost you at least ₹70,000 a night without taxes in the peak summer. During the holiday season the same room goes up to as much as ₹85,000 plus taxes, well above its pre-covid rate. On the ghats of the Ganges in Varanasi, the story is no different.
The BrijRama Palace hotel, a smaller, more bespoke property that is 210 years old, charges upwards of ₹25,000 a night on average. Brij Hospitality Pvt. Ltd, the hotel management company that runs the luxury small-key asset, has hiked the room rates of its marquee property by 50% since the pandemic began.
A ‘small key’ asset is a property with 50 rooms or less. For two years now, Indian hospitality companies have been having a good run. Hotel rates have shot up significantly and occupancies have also normalized to a higher level than before the pandemic began thanks to a surge in demand from domestic tourists.
Anant Apurv Kumar, one of the directors of Brij Hospitality, said the demand pattern was drastically different pre-covid, when Indians would go on less frequent but longer holidays. To add to that, there were far fewer hotels offering “immersive experiences" for a luxurious stay catering to Indian travellers. Today, more frequent short breaks have prompted a surge in prices for Indian tourists.
Read more on livemint.com
