Priyanka Saxena Ray
The year 2023
It’s been a very good year on both the business front as well as expansion. Currently, we have about 70 hotels in the pipeline and in the next two years, we would be opening almost 2 hotels a month. We are focusing on both Tier II and Tier III cities, leisure destinations, and city hotels. In terms of business, the last 18 months have been very good. This is also because of all the events happening in India – G20, World Cup, demand and supply and boom in domestic tourism have collectively contributed to good business numbers.
Weddings @ IHCL
The good thing about the hotel segment is that we deal in a lot of verticals. The Corporate segment is back, MICE is doing very well and continues to grow, leisure – both domestic and international continues to be strong and as for the weddings market, we are seeing more or less the same level as 2019 so it hasn’t really slowed down for us. So, for now, all segments are doing well but our focus will be more on MICE and getting business from international events that puts India at the forefront.
Domestic Market
The domestic segment for our company used to contribute about 10% to our business in 2020 but currently, Domestic and Inbound is 50-50 and we see that continuing. More and more Indians are travelling, the road infrastructure is better, people are discovering their own country like never before so this surge will surely continue.
New Openings
We are expanding very quickly in the North East and have just announced our new hotel in Gangtok. We are opening a hotel in Tawang by the end of this year. We are also opening a hotel in Kolkata and we will continue to expand in destinations like Goa we also opened one in Wayanad, Kerala last year. Overall, a very robust expansion plan is in place.
Sustainability @ IHCL
At IHCL we have an initiative called ‘Paathya’ that encapsulates our initiatives to lead positive change with IHCL’s core values of trust of all stakeholders, Awareness around the needs of our ecosystem and joy at heart. Taking ahead IHCLs over a century-old legacy, Paathya forges a journey focused on Environmental Stewardship, Social Responsibility, Excellence in Governance, Preserving Heritage, Value Chain Transformation, and Sustainable Growth.
Our belief in sustainable growth remains deep-rooted in our legacy, aligned with diversity, excellence and positive outcomes. The core objective of Paathya is to promote economic growth while maintaining social and environmental impact.
We are highly committed towards sustainability from taking care of the environment to providing skills and livelihood to people to taking care of Heritage Sites through UNESCO to having local supplier management. We have set ourselves goals for 2030 and are running ahead of time in most of them, which speaks a lot about our seriousness towards sustainability. Coming from the House of TATAs, sustainability is inbuilt into our blood and duty.
Women Travellers
We launched 2 important IPs last year, one was – She Remains The Taj, where we focus on single women travellers and women in general. We also launched packages called ‘Voyage’, which focus on women travellers and single women solo travellers. We have also launched an exciting concept called ‘Carecations’, which is towards voluntary tourism that provides you an opportunity to give back to society when you go on a holiday with your family.
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