With 24 hotels in its portfolio across five brands in 16 Indian cities, US-based global hospitality major Hilton is eyeing rapid short-term growth in India with more than two dozens openings in next three years and eventually bringing all its 19 diverse hotel brands to the Indian market by 2030.
In conversation with ETTravelWorld, Hilton India’s leadership duo – Navjit Ahluwalia, Senior Vice President and Country Head of Hilton in India and Manish Tolani, Vice President & Commercial Director, Hilton India reiterated that the hotel brand has 14 hotels in the pipeline including the much-anticipated debut of luxury brand Waldorf Astoria in India with the property scheduled to open in 2027 in Jaipur. Hilton in India will also significantly expand the Hilton Garden and DoubleTree brand in India on the onset of rising demand for branded hotels in Tier-II and Tier-III markets.
Emphasizing on the importance of Indian market for the American multinational hospitality company, Ahluwalia said that Hilton considers India as one of its top priority markets. “India is going to be a very large lodging market. I think there’s no secret to the fact that we believe India will be the third largest market in the world after the US and China. So, there’s absolutely full commitment of Hilton to play a very important role in the expansion of hospitality industry in India and also be among the top hotel players in the country,” he said during the interaction.
Sharing Hilton’s expansion plans in India which involves doubling its hotel portfolio in three years’ time, Ahluwalia added that Hilton is scheduled to open three new hotels this year after making signings in 2023.
“We obviously have some catch up to do because we currently have only 24 hotels operational in India and another 14 in the pipeline. Our short-term goal is to have 75 hotels in India by 2027. But it is important to note that we regard India as a race ahead of us and not behind us because we are looking at decades of growth in India. We call this the ‘India Century’ as we are at the beginning of what is going to be a long-term growth of hospitality industry in the country.
Massive expansion can happen in India with regards to growth of Hilton, Garden Inn, DoubleTree, and Hampton in the coming years. That is going to be a massive opportunity for us. We have all kind of brands catering to different segments, it is just about bringing them and deploying in India. That’s what we are doing and regionalising them in India according to the market demand.”
Talking about the consumer preferences and changing travel trends which affected the hospitality industry, Tolani said that the Covid-19 pandemic and other developments in last couple of years helped Hilton to customers well and recognize how they like to look, book, stay and return to their hotels in the short term.
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“The domestic audience that we have acquired over the last couple of years, which were new in nature, we know that they are active because almost 60 per cent of them are rebooking with us. They are choosing to rebook with us from our website and through an OTA,” he stated during the conversation.
The average night’s stay by guests at Hilton hotels has also gone up in the last two years across the leisure and business segments. Explaining the reason behind the shift, Tolani said, “One is from a staycation perspective as people are using in the city, for the city staycations a lot more in the last two years. Another reason is bleisure trips where business travel trips are getting extended with flexible work culture and preference to spend some more time at destinations with the family,” he said.
Pinning hopes on ‘bumper summer season’ with strong demand, Ahluwalia expressed optimism on Hilton’s growth and business in India. “We are already seeing a very large kick-off in new developments that have not slowed down during Covid and last few years.”
He went on to say that the Indian hospitality market is now for the first time recovering from a rate perspective earlier than the full occupancy. “The average occupancy in the country is reaching 70 per cent, which is probably the highest it has reached in the last decade or so.”
Ranked as the top company in India to work for and best in industry in the hotels and resorts category in a recent global research, Ahluwalia said the Hilton India top management is making conscious efforts to utilize and strengthen our skilled workforce. “We want to be a great place to work as we are already regarded worldwide as one of the best places to work,” he said.
“Our focus is to deliver on what customers what and address the challenges they are facing. We also have to make sure that we have a great bank of talent because it’s going to be a race for talent going forward,” he added.
In the next few months, Hilton is opening a DoubleTree hotel in Whitefield, Bengaluru. Next up is another DoubleTree property in Kathmandu, which will open before the end of this year or early next year. The company has also scheduled the launch of DoubleTree’s debut in Varanasi in October 2023. Hilton also has a big convention hotel under construction in Manyata Tech Park in Bengaluru, which will open up in 2025.
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On this, Ahluwalia said that Hilton is going to increase the pace of signing new hotels so that they can open 8 to 10 new hotels a year and expand the company’s presence across key getaways. “We are definitely focused on not only Tier-II but Tier-III and other markets that have a lot of potential for travel. All our signings this year are in tertiary markets like Nagpur, Guwahati and Varanasi.”
Talking about business in 2023, Tolani anticipates that the growth will come from business travel, MICE and weddings in India. He said, “I think, bleisure travel is doing extremely well. Other than this is the MICE segment, which has shown huge potential over the years. We didn’t see it recovering from Covid so quickly, but the coming of large box, MICE events have surprised us pleasantly. Large scale MICE events in India now getting planned way ahead in advance, which is a new trend. So, we are very excited on both these fronts. The third one is weddings. We launched Wedding Diaries by Hilton as our IP two years back with a vision to deliver a very different kind of wedding experience with all our five different Hilton brand we operate in India. We have outlined a positive five-year roadmap to the Wedding Diaries by Hilton.”
