In this conversation, driven by Zubin Saxena, head of Hilton Hotels in India, we feature Deep Kalra, chairman and founder, MakeMyTrip; Priya Paul, chairperson, Apeejay Surendra The ParkHotels; K B Kachru, chairman, Radisson Hotels India and South Asia; Prasoon Mukherjee, chairman, Universal Success Group; and Anil Chadha, CEO and MD, ITC Hotels Limited.
Zubin Saxena: Tourism and hospitality has changed, has evolved over the last 20 years or so, will greatly evolve over the next 20 years and I think today is a little bit about getting the collective thoughts of how various aspects of our industry are changing, how we think times will look like as we go ahead into the future.
So, India of course as we speak right now is a booming domestic market. You know we are at this point in time one of the youngest populations in the world, average age of India today being 29 years and getting younger. As you know, India will be about 20% of under 30 years of age working population with a great degree of growth potential for the future. So again, this is our opportunity in time.
And as we get into the panel, I wanted to talk a little bit about a Hilton travel trends report that we published in 2025. So, these are some of the trends which are influencing the global travel industry. And I’ll just go to some of the highlights.
This report is a global survey of about 13,000 travelers across 13 countries and it highlights some of some of the very interesting findings that are impacting our industry globally today right today. The year 2025 is dubbed as the year of the travel maximizer. Travelers are increasingly focused on making the most of their time and money seeking high impact experiences. So that’s 76% of the respondents seeking accommodations that offer a variety of experiences throughout their stay.
The second big trend that’s impacting the global hospitality industry is blending adventures with restorative retreats. What that means is that there’s a growing dichotomy where travelers want to be active, they want adventure-filled trips, which means getaways, and they also want restorative experiences like sleep tourism and wellness retreats. 69% enjoy being active while traveling. 25% plan outdoor adventures. Then there’s the evolution of blended and group travel. Trends like frollies, friends and colleagues who are traveling together, that’s nearly 30% of travelers often vacation with professional acquaintances. So that’s multi-generational travel especially in a market like India is becoming very important.
Then another relevant trend is around slow travel and cultural immersion. It means immersing oneself in the destination for an extended period of time to experience local culture. That’s gaining popularity and at least one in four leisure travelers are planning to explore new cultures in this way. Some of the other trends, high tech travel meets digital detox. Travelers are increasingly valuing technology. Digital keys are very important to them. For instance, you know, 63 percent place importance on these kinds of elements. There is a growing desire to disconnect and 24% admitting to more frequent digital detoxes during vacations. Food tourism and mindful drinking.
There is a trend that’s coming up. It is called sober curiosity, right? And it’s called tempo drinking. So, one in four travelers are reducing or stopping alcohol consumption while traveling. There’s a surge in sports and outdoor tourism. Gen Alpha and Gen Z influence travel decisions. And that’s critical for a market like India, where 70% of the respondents with children said that their kids chose the destination they
want to travel to.
Deep, I would like to invite you to give us a presentation on travel trends and technology that you prepared. So why don’t you open the house and then we can invite the others to speak.
Deep Kalra: Thank you Zubin. It seems like while you were looking at world travelers, I think a few thousand of them, it could have been just India and this is just so true of Indians. So, Zubin rightfully said that we are going digital. He wanted digital detox. Zubin, I’m going digital retox. I’m really going to talk about what we as MakeMyTrip have really seen on technology powering our sales and going forward what we think could be some of the trends. Obviously, AI and I’m going to try to demystify AI as much as I can in this short time.
The purpose of putting this up is to tell you we do a whole bunch of stuff besides flights and hotels. So, everything else is really hotels, homestays, and then about 12 other things. This is really interesting. Here I’m talking about really technology being the only way to power scale, at least for us. I’ve been in travel in this industry for 25 years, and I still don’t think I’m a travel industry person. I still think I’m a technology guy who happens to be in travel. And I love both. But just the two or three I want to call out out here, which are worth looking at, is that 31 million room nights were booked last year on our platform.
The last year, financial year ending, 24. The growth is about 25% to 30%. We are listed, so I obviously can’t say till the quarter is over. Every minute about 230 transactions are happening and obviously this wouldn’t be possible without technology. We have a lot of people but still this is really tech that makes it happen. In terms of the numbers, I’m most proud and excited about over the last few years is to talk really about our operating profit number. We are not in travel but we are the most valuable internet company in the country from an operating profit point of view.
The form factor and the product offering has changed in a fascinating way. 2000-2005 I don’t even have on the screen. It was all desktop. It was largely US-India. India wasn’t ready. 2005 is when we launched in India. It was a humble website, and that’s what it was. 1.0 of e-commerce, and I still have our original ones. You can go on to waybackmachine.com and see them, and they’re good for a laugh.
Our first app was actually built on Blackberry. So, Blackberry in 2011 was the most excited about building an app. Obviously, the Blackberry thing didn’t last that long. But iOS and Android soon happened. And all of you are familiar with those apps, I hope. What’s happened in 2025 is very interesting. Firstly, at the bottom of it, I don’t have a pointer, but you have that robo face at the bottom of that screen, second last screen. That is your AI booking assistant at any point of time. We call her Myra, but it’s because we have to be gender neutral nowadays. It’s a robo. I think we should have a pretty face, but I was overruled by Gen Z in the office. Serious story. So, we just have this robotic looking.
Myra can now help you do anything on the site. Wherever you’re stuck, you don’t need to ask someone with you. You don’t need to call anyone else. Myra will help you. And going further, we have personalized profiles. So if you’re a MakeMyTrip Black member, then your home screen itself will look different. It will show different things. If you have shown on our last, let’s say, five or six searches the kind of places you were looking for, the kind of places you were staying, were definitely more on the upper scale, then you’ll only get those kinds of recommendations. So, a different screen, different personalization.
Coming to AI. We all hear about Gen AI. I think everyone is aware. If I was to ask people, what is AI? I think most people in this room and maybe anywhere in India or whatever would have said chat GPT or something like that, right? So artificial intelligence, we all know this is something mimicking our intelligence, giving us answers like the real world and chat GPT is the best known.
The real hero is not AI folks. The real hero is actually data. Data, without data you can’t do any of this. So all the data that all of us collect, if you can structure that data and you can feed it to that AI tool on top and keep training the tool, that’s how you get really something which we call Gen AI or something which can learn. These are learning models. So, price lock and pay later was a response to the biggest problem people had when they were booking a flight with us, which is, will the price go up or the price go down? All of us keep asking that. But we have a price lock feature. And the price lock is basis, all the data, all the trends that we are seeing, literally millions and millions of pieces, we have PhDs working on this. Finally, we came out with a model saying, lock in today with a tiny premium. It’s like insurance. It’s the same model as insurance, there’s nothing else. And if the price goes up, you pay the price you locked on to, but here was the cherry on the top, if the price goes down, you pay the lower price. So, there’s no buyer remorse on this. It’s done exceedingly well, now we have more than almost 15-20% of our bookings coming from price lock. This is for domestic right now, for international we need more data, but hopefully we’ll have it.
Trip guarantee, all of us here have travelled on Indian trains, the biggest problem with Indian trains, wait list, we don’t know when it will get confirmed. Everyone in this room calls up someone they know and gets it confirmed, now we don’t travel so much by train on our own. But data can again tell you your likelihood of getting confirmed. So, we can take a bet, if you pay a tiny premium and you take a trip guarantee product, then if you don’t get confirmed, you get 3x of the amount back, very often enough to buy your low-cost carrier ticket on that. So this, again, is only because of data. Cluster search I’ll race through right now. Going further, with AI, what we have managed to do, getting from customers and giving it back to customers, you go to a hotel, wherever you’re searching, on any platform, this is not a sell job for make my trip, you’ll get thousands of reviews.
No one has time to go through thousands. The brain can process maybe three or five reviews at a time. That’s why when you go to the Apple website and you’ll compare three phones or three laptops or whatever, that’s what the brain can do. So through AI, those thousands of reviews will be processed in a way that we can give you a one-line description to a hotel. So whichever hotel you pick, any small hotel or any large hotel, you’d have a one or two line basis what the travelers are telling you. If you want to do more, you can click on and do more. On the right-hand side, you’ll see dynamically on the fly, if you’ve changed the number of travelers for the same dates in Goa, first you were one person going. We were recommending for you something which I think was like some kind of party or something like that.
The moment you change it to three, dynamically you’ll get options recommended to you, which are made for a family or a group travel or froligs, as we just learned.
Natural thing in your mind, at least in my mind and we both searched it, we got the answer like a conversation, that’s what’s happening. Models are becoming commoditized, so everyone now has the model available for them. You can use the model in a company, you don’t have to invest anything but you have to be much smarter in the application of that. What you will do with the model, how you will differentiate yourself is the key. Even today when we advise our kids or our grandkids or whatever, where do you want to do, what do you want to study, what are the skills you want to pick up? When I grew up I could tell you the biggest skill we had to pick up besides everything else, mental math was one, the second was rote. Today, rote is gone. Wherever you are studying, rote is not important. What’s important is, how can you cull the data? What do you do? There is actually too much data. It’s like drinking from a fire hydrant. What do you do with the data? And that is what I think with AI is also happening. Perhaps chatbots are going to replace apps altogether.
I see the future on the phone not being the kind of thing you see today for travel booking apps. I actually just see a microphone in the middle of a blank screen. And you won’t even press it. The moment you speak, it’ll recognize like Siri, recognize your voice, and you’ll say what you want in Hindi, in English, in any language. Today on our platform you already can book in Hindi or English speaking. So GenAI is actually perfectly built for vernacular searches and that’s the fascinating part of it. We are preparing doing a bunch of stuff.
Zubin Saxena: While I’m at Hilton right now, I used to be part of a lovely company, Radisson Hotels hotels before this and had a huge footprint across the country which exposes you to a lot of traveler trends/consumer trends/ guest preferences and even at Hilton, one of the largest hotel companies in the world, obviously exposed to a lot of customer preferences. I like to believe that all hotel companies are also big data companies. And just the power of that data is the difference between success and failure so many times. So, thank you Deep, that’s a lovely start to the conversation. So,, Priya, I want to ask my first question to you. Today what we are trying to achieve on this panel is to perhaps talk through various different aspects of our industry, of the various influences that we have.
So, we spoke about technology, we will speak about lifestyle and trends, we will talk a little bit about regulatory issues, we will talk about sustainability and we will talk about some global insights with Prasoon around how he thinks about India.
So, Priya I want to ask you a question. You took the leadership of APJ, Surendra The Park Hotels at a very young age transforming a small group of hotels into a leading national chain. What were the biggest challenges you faced during the early years? And more importantly, in continuation with what Deep spoke about, how have you seen the trends change over the years in your space?
Priya Paul: To go back to history. I was a very young person. I was only 22 when I joined the business and 23 and a half or 24 when I did take over the business and at that time there were just three properties which were Delhi, Calcutta, Vishakhapatnam, and you all know, it was a family business and we had developed those businesses as part of kind of a real estate play and I was not a hotelier which was actually a positive and and then so you know once I settled in a bit and I was trained a bit by my father and then he passed away and then I had to look at this portfolio of hotels. I realized I can do it differently and I can have my own view. I can have my own viewpoint, the way I want to see it. And that’s what I started doing and experimenting and we actually built this out very early.
So, in 1994 is when this kind of our vision and mission statement which we formulated was leadership to differentiation and it was very clear that we wanted to be a collection of luxury boutique hotels and I have to say that vision and mission statement I think we’ve not changed one word in 20 years. So, the company believes it, it’s part of it. And I think what I was very clear from the mid-90s that I, and at that time I had only this canvas of three hotels, so I said I wanted to make them differentiated, I wanted to make them fun and interesting to go to, and I didn’t want to have a boring kind of hotel. So, what I did was really use art, design, music, fashion, food to kind of make these three hotels like buzzy fun hotels in each of the cities they were. We were also at the right time in the 90s was when Indians, the liberalization had happened and suddenly people had money to spend and the economic prospects of India were fantastic. We really drove this whole idea of boutique hotels. And I think that’s something, you know, now you call them lifestyle hotels, there’s so many other groups that have gotten to that space, whether Indian groups or international, who are doing lifestyle hotels at all price levels.
So, when we started building this out, we then moved on to the tier 2 and tier 3 cities because in the mid-2000s, we also saw the growth in the tier 2 and tier 3 cities, knew that this is where it was headed in the smaller cities. I knew that we couldn’t put a big Park Hotel, which was by then about 200, 250 rooms, in those smaller destinations and locations.
So, we created this brand, Zoned by the Park. We now have about 24 of those that are open and also the way forward. But what we did was looking at design, looking at food and beverages and banqueting. So, a lot of our competition was not putting food and beverage that was like a well-thought-out, interesting kind of play for the customers of those small cities because they all wanted places to entertain, they wanted a bar, they also wanted banqueting. We formulated our brand around those activities. I think that’s been quite interesting. And I think along the way what has happened, the whole world has changed.
And you talked about the consumers being below 30, that’s where it’s all changing and what do they want, how are they traveling. That’s what’s coming into age now in India. When I did it in the 90s, people say, oh my god, your hotel is a little different, it’s a little thing. I said, but it’s not, my hotel is not for everybody. And I think that was also part of maybe the foolishness of youth.
Zubin Saxena: Tell us now, with the way the demographics in our country are changing, does the definition of lifestyle and luxury boutique and the customer preferences still remain the same? You think you will go through a massive reinvention over the next five to 10 years because just the way the demographics are changing?
Priya Paul: See, I don’t think 70-year-olds can’t have fun, just as a seven-year-old can. You touched about some of those things in your opening remarks about the travel trends that you’ve seen and what customers want. And it’s really about the experience economy now. So, whether you call it lifestyle hotels or people are going, as you said, for adventure as well as relaxing. I was just telling Deep, I am going to Costa Rica next week. And it’s both. It’s an adventure experience and it’s hospitality, it’s relaxation.
I don’t know if I’ll do the digital detox so much but you switch off when you’re in those type of places. We are also blending so many things and so many experiences as we go along, right? So, I don’t think that changes. I think because the customers are becoming younger, all of us have to be more open to how consumer trends are changing and it’s a big demographic.
But in India, you will have an aging population that’s very large and you’ll have the youth also that’s quite large. India is a little peculiar always. And so you have, you know, groups of solo women going, older people who are traveling in groups without their children. I think that’s what happens or maybe living in assisted living but yet want to go for a holiday.
Zubin Saxena: So last question for you before we move on. Do you see customer preferences being different from tier 1 markets and the bigger cities as you move into the other parts of the country? Do you see a fundamental shift or a change or a gap emerging there?
Priya Paul: Well, there’s a lot of money in tier two and tier three, so it’ll surprise you as to how much the spending power is and also the hunger to spend because there’s very little available. And if you see all the brands that are going into, whether it’s even the QSR and higher, that are going into all the tier 2 and tier 3 cities. People are going out, and they’re having very sophisticated food and beverage in standalone places. So, I see that changing a lot. So just as we see competition in the big cities from that, but I see that coming in tier 2 and tier 3 a lot. So, I think it’s a fairly sophisticated customer.
They’re also traveling. I mean, Deep will give you data on all the small-town people who are traveling abroad. It’s massive. But they’re learning, seeing, just as I think we saw in the mid-’90s in the big cities.
Zubin Saxena: And how do those trends affect F&B?
Priya Paul: Well, we all have to be very innovative, competitive pricing, but still people come to hotels, for especially five-star and deluxe luxury hotels for the complete experience, for the service. So, whereas on an everyday basis, I want to maybe experiment, but the standalone restaurants and bars are doing an outstanding job. I think there’s space for both.
Zubin Saxena: Mr. Kachru, we’ll come to you. We’ll change track a little bit. I want to ask you questions along two tracks. One is on Radisson Hotel Group, and the company has grown over the years and you’ve grown it through the length and breadth of the country. So, my first question is, what are the strategic factors over the years that you think have been very important for the growth and how do you see them changing as we go ahead?
K. B. Kachru: You have been a part of it. Navin, a little while back, mentioned we started in late 90s. We opened our first hotel in Delhi and it’s funny but the perception those days was that when international chains come, they need only big boxes. They should deal only with big boxes. So that was the mandate given to me. And you know Delhi, Calcutta, Mumbai, Bangalore, these were the only places where we could. So we were, I would say, good luck, great combination of people. We started with one but we thought the opportunities available will be limited. I’m talking about 28 years back now. We felt that we need to be doing something very different. Market dynamics are changing. And we divided, I’ll give an example of NCR, and I’ve said this many times, when we realized that we are not going to get big boxes of 300 rooms to 500 rooms, we divided the entire NCR in different zones. We said how the market is changing, each zone will have its own pull factor and today I’m really proud to say, we have 25 operating hotels in Delhi only, just NCR. So, it was very early for us to realize that, big towns and particularly for international brands, they didn’t have a great experience in India. They came 60-70 years back, but for some reasons, they just couldn’t make much headway. So, they’re not investing. And we felt if we have to go management and franchising route, we need to do something different. So, the team actually, it’s not my idea, it was the team at that time, we just had two or three people to start with in the country. And we said, let’s try, what is emerging and what is the market which would be there after 20 years? We didn’t want to take a short-term view that we must produce in the next two years or three years X number of hotels. So, what we did is we looked at small towns but which were emerging state capitals and we realized and data was available. Deep just now said that, unless you have information, you can’t do anything. It was available, and we managed to get enough information to see that 15 to 20 years ahead, 50% of the GDP is going to come from these tier one, tier two and tier three cities. So that’s the area how we found ourselves out. We have 70 locations now. And the reason is we focused, and 50% of our own portfolio is in tier two and tier three and now we are in tier four cities. So, you have to change yourself with what the market wants, not otherwise.
Zubin Saxena: And so, when you say that, over the last five years, there’s almost 75 new markets that have opened in the country. I think the new cities, new towns and then Deep, your team pulls up a lot of data and you’re amazed to see where the bookings are happening. They are going into locations, many cities which probably are, we’ve never heard or never been to before. So, India as a destination is emerging.
K. B. Kachru: I’m a bit concerned on what was happening twenty years back and what’s happening now. We need to change ourselves; our industry needs to change. We need to take steps what would work for us. In one of the earlier sessions, some of the panellists were talking about last mile connectivity, talking about fifty new destinations, talking about why Delhi is not something like London or New York.
The problem is unless we structure ourselves and plan, now fifty cities have been declared by Government of India but unless we look at it as a green field project and develop in every aspect it would remain a dream. So, the infrastructure, last mile connectivity and what needs to be done, if it could be done with Aerocity, I mean great compliments to them and how certain areas of Gurgaon have come up, people thought about it. So, let’s not do things piecemeal. We have to align ourselves to what the market wants from that point of view.
Zubin Saxena: You wear two hats and the other hat, which you wear, is the President of the HAI. You know you have previously called for tourism and hospitality to become a national priority, you know citing the sector’s economic and employment impact. What specific policy changes or incentives do you believe are most urgently needed for the government to unlock the industry’s full potential?
K. B. Kachru: I think we have to have one voice and I can say this, I have the permission of my colleagues on the panel to say that, Deep, Puneet, Priya, Dr. Suri and others who have been working for different associations, what we are trying to say is that please think what you can do. Don’t expect everything from the government. And we, in the last few years, we have really not focused only on asking what can you do for us. We don’t want incentives; we don’t want subsidies. We are saying that, hey, please look at your own policies. Look at your own policies and what you are committing to others. When you are committing, a little while back, you must have heard I told the chief guest, I said it’s great to announce policies. We as Hotel Association have been working for the last many years. We have been working hard on tourism being declared as an industry. 17 states have done it, which is good news. And I must applaud people who have worked for it before me and the team now is working, but the tragedy is it’s only one and a half state which has actually moved ahead. When they announce the policies, they need to actually see who is accountable for this.
So, I think it is our role, industry’s role, industry leaders have to get involved in actually pushing for what they have announced. We are asking for tweaking of policies. We are not looking for subsidies anymore. So that’s our priority and One Voice, all the associations, all the leaders, you have to know your priorities and you have to acknowledge what our weaknesses are. We cannot go ahead, we are talking today we want hundred million inbound tourists and that too in 2047. We want hundred million and thirty million mark has been put for 2030. If I can say it in Hindi, ‘kahan se aayenge yeh log’? ‘Kaise aayenge yeh log? Aur kaha rehenge’? Our inventory, hotel inventory, like Deep is saying, the whole of India has around 200,000 branded rooms. City of New York has more rooms than whole of India. So, we have to work, we have to help the government, we have to help ourselves as an industry. And Zubin, that’s our priority. We want to work towards that.
Zubin Saxena: There is a long way that you’ve come and there is a long way to go ahead. I think it’s going to be a journey but clearly one step at a time. Prasoon, I want to shuffle over to you now. why don’t you tell us a little bit about your plans and secondly, what do you see from your prism is happening here and how India is going to change
Prasoon Mukherjee: Let’s all plan a holiday this summer to Kashmir. That is the message which I want to give to anybody, anywhere, any city I go. So that’s probably I wanted to say in the beginning. Anybody any you go to anywhere meet any journalist any editor of any any newspaper and he said I have walked under Aveek Sarkar. So, Mr. Kachru is one of those you know we have all walked under, Mr. Kachru is one of those. I don’t have much to say about hotel industry. I was in the hotel industry at one point of time. We own the franchise of TGI Friday, but that’s not what I do. We are mainly, we are the largest hydrocarbon private trader of Southeast Asia. We own currently with Salim Group of Indonesia, the largest coal concession of Asia called Ithaka and Bhoomi. In India we are developing in Calcutta, obviously I come from Calcutta so we are doing a data center, we have business centres. We are also doing logistics parks across the country.
India is growing in a big way. I could give some practical examples. In year 1994 something like that, if my wife would stand in front of a shop in Malaysia, let’s say Lotte, and stand in front of a crystal shop for a little while, the guy would kind of give a look and say, this is the Indian, she’s just looking and she’ll just walk away. And today, if my wife goes to Harrods into the Van Cleef store, and she looks at it from outside, the lady from outside will come in, come outside and say, ma’am, can you come inside and have a look properly. I think we as Indians have achieved this. You should see the difference at which the London Heathrow Airport treats you as an Indian.
Last 11 years, the vision which the current leadership of India, has taken abroad is unbelievable. Mr. Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister of India. And there was a minister who was traveling abroad. Mr. Modi called him back. You know he did not allow him to take the plane. And he said, ‘Apni kapdo mein jayiye. Ekso tees crore logon ko represent karte hai bahar. Sar ucha karke hindustani kapde pehen ke jayiye. Aap Bharat ke mantri hai’. I think Mr. Modi has given us that pride. Anywhere we go I’m absolutely talking a political. People who know me, they know I have a 100% Congress background family. But I must say that he himself has given that pride to all of us everywhere.
Concluding, I will say that you know there is a there is a problem which I feel is that, and I have said this very often, our foreign policies are very much directed towards the West. You know we are very, ‘sabko achcha lagta hai Singapore jaana’, where I live. But I think the real growth is happening in Asia. The Indian perspective must include more of South East as well, and beyond.
Zubin Saxena: Anil, we’ll move to you now. I had two questions. One is around the growth path that you’re undertaking. And how are you planning to pursue innovation and agility and differentiated guest experiences? The second part of my question is around responsible luxury, a thing that ITC is so well known for. So, tell us a little bit about both these aspects of your business.
Anil Chadha: I’ll probably join both the answers together. Now as you said, I’m the last guy on the panel to answer questions. Sustainability obviously is not on the agenda of on top priority, all right? But let me try to address this by talking a little bit about responsible luxury. I think it was early 2000 when we were trying to reposition the organization, of our luxury hotels, whether we go the luxury route or we go the green route. The green route was obviously a little misunderstood and people thought that we are not going to give them towels or we’ll not give them bedsheets and we’ll not give them enough water to drink or there will be not enough water and things like that. And I think then this thing came about that the positioning has to be responsible luxury. So, sustainability and luxury can go hand in hand. When we opened our hotel in Bangalore called ITC Gardenia, which was really a tribute to the Garden City, this was really our first hotel which did not have an air-conditioned lobby.
So, we consumed 25% less electricity than any other city hotel. This was one hotel where we did everything we had to do, a war on waste, we had to do everything on plant and machinery and we went in for a LEED Platinum rating by the US Green Building Council, which was the highest rating available in the world at that point in time. And thereafter we thought that all our hotels should be LEED Platinum rated and that’s how the entire positioning and entire philosophy of luxury became with responsibility. And today we are very proud to say that all our own hotels are LEED Platinum rated. 12 of our hotels are LEED Carbon, LEED Zero Carbon. 8 of our hotels are LEED Zero Water. The US Green Building Council for the first time awarded us actually the first hotel company in the world for a US company to award for sustainability excellence. That was a great honor that we got. So I think it’s the whole DNA which came down from a parent company ITC which always believed in triple bottom line philosophy and sustainability became a core and the entire positioning of our luxury hotels then became with responsibility and not just towards creating those great assets, making sure that every employee of ours understands that because sustainability was a word which even we couldn’t understand in those days but today it’s certainly become a necessity. Every article that you read today tells you about the young generation. You spoke about some numbers of the youth. What is changing around them?
I think there’s a recent study by Bain and Company which said that 65% more travelers today know more about sustainability than they ever were. India, Brazil and China, they say that they have 15% people who are ready to pay more towards sustainable products or services and which probably is being witnessed today. If you ask me that is somebody going to pay you a thousand rupees extra because you are staying in a sustainable hotel, not at this point in time, but it’s getting there. Every corporate is today asking you, every RFP that we all signed they ask you, they ask you about your carbon emissions, they ask you about your sustainable initiatives. So, it’s all getting there, you know. And that’s important for us to all realize because we all have a responsibility towards the natural resources. We owe this to the Mother Earth. What you leave behind tomorrow is very important.
The growth agenda certainly started by building our own assets. And I think we were late entrants in the hospitality space. We only came in 1975. By the time the two established players were very well established in the country. But I think ITC made some great assets. Every metro location today, you have some great hotels. In fact, every metro location, you have two luxury hotels, except Chennai, where the hotel itself is about the size of three hotels. So, that worked extremely well for us.
We went on, started looking at management contracts and we opened this brand called The Fortune. It’s done rather well. And I think in the last four to five years, now that we’ve consolidated our position, demonstrated what we can achieve as a hotel company, we stepped up our game towards management contracts. In the last four to five years have been pretty exciting. We’ve opened about 29 hotels in the last 24 months. The pipeline is very strong. We launched two new brands. You were talking about trends, and that’s what we saw. I think we were leaving loose change on the table when people came to you, say, manage smaller hotels, and we didn’t have a brand. And that’s how Storii got involved and you could go to these various destinations. I heard the panel talking about stories and experiences and that’s where that fitted in very well. All those who came to us to open a luxury hotel, we always had a lot of questions to be answered and this thing which did not work many a times and that’s how Momentos came. We opened our first Momentos in Udaipur, we opened the second one in Jaipur, we have one which is being built in Rishikesh right now, we have recently signed one more which I will probably announce in another week’s time, so it is getting stronger on that front as well.
So that’s been a pretty exciting journey. On the food and beverage front. I think we’ve done rather well. We’ve got some legacy brands, whether it’s Bukhara or Dum Pukht, which we are really, really proud of. Bukhara has survived 47 years. Dum Pukht has been in existence for about 35 years. We recently added another brand to our portfolio called the Avaratan, which is South Indian and again promoting Indian food, Indian culture, Indian taste forward and did not want it to be a traditional restaurant so we made it a little differently and has worked rather well. Standalone restaurants have done amazingly well.
The question that you have been asking, 10 years back if somebody asked me this question, I would rubbish it, I would say no, no, no, they can’t be a threat to any 5-star hotel. But the reality is that some amazing brands have been built and the consumption is at a different level which you never even imagined what it would be. On Saturday night and Friday night, believe you me, in Delhi and Bombay, Bangalore, Chennai, you won’t find a table anywhere. You know that’s how the economy is growing. The government has done a great job as well. We have been speaking about the infra. I can only quote you one example on the drivers of business. We all knew corporate, we all knew the retail business.
But if you ask somebody about five years back, I wanted to do a 1000 people conference in Delhi. There was not a place available. If you ask somebody to go in Bombay, there was not a place available. Today you have the Yashobhoomi, you have the Bharat Mandapam, you have the Jio complex in Bombay, you got this complex in Calcutta, you got a great complex in Jaipur, what is it doing for you? It is driving you that business which was probably non-existent. But today now the time has come to market yourself. You know Coldplay comes to India and does a show in Ahmedabad with 1,20,000 capacity in India, was never heard of. The largest show they did in the world. These are all indicators. Look at your road network today for driving distance holidays. Himachal, we didn’t have anything until five years back. Today we run about 13 hotels out there and you are able to drive down, you are able to take those things, otherwise you could only go to Agra or Jaipur. There are great opportunities. I think it’s a public-private partnership. You need to partner with the government as well in terms of what you can bring to the table and rather than always saying that you know somebody else has to do something. On the whole I think we are living in interesting times. We’ve gone through the grind, we all went through the worst years of our life with COVID, we all went down completely, we were on the mat but the bouncing back has been
stronger.
The purpose of travel is getting repurposed a bit. Last year, was the first time I noticed a trend that the weekend occupancies in my hotels in the business locations were matching the weekday occupancies, which is never heard of. Because, earlier, you would take a dip dramatically. So where was this coming from? Obviously, there was some movement of staycations, there was a movement of weddings, there were these groups that she spoke about. There are so many groups which are being formed today, ladies group, girls’ group, alumni group, boys’ group, God knows, I mean it’s just that you just need to get out, you know and everybody is talking of trends, these trends are being formed every day, you know you also wonder who came to you, these guys used to work together 20 years back, they were on Facebook for 20 years, now they are travelling together, so that’s another group.
Zubin Saxena: Clearly good times, I think our hotel occupancies are saying that looks like the road ahead is going to be quite strong. This year looks good as well. And I think the Indian domestic boom has really taken off. And I think it’s got a little bit to do with COVID. And there’s one thing which everybody, and all of us in this room are COVID survivors in that sense. I think that’s one realization which came to all of us is how precious our independence is. And I think that has really put that travel bug in the people to travel.
