What makes the hotel industry in India a goldmine for all players?

Posted by Andrew Thomas on July 9th, 2019

Over the last five years or so, social media networks have had a huge impact on the hotel and hospitality industry. The more people experience new hotels, the more they share on social media platforms, giving brands free promotion and spreading a good word over the web. The way social media marketing has revolutionized the travel, hotel and hospitality industry is a marvellous thing to see.

The hotel industry in India particularly has shown a positive spike in the period of 2018 to 2023 and is projected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 13% year-on-year. Hence, this industry has also emerged as one of the strongest revenue growths contributing industries in the country. Unlike the other sectors like retail and e-commerce which show a skew towards the urban population, for hotel industry in India, both metros, semi-metros and rural hotels have posed equally promising opportunities.

Recently OYO, Oravel Stays Private Limited, India’s first successful budget hotel start-up, started its operations in the United States and launched a dynamic pricing strategy. Until a few years ago, it would have been unimaginable for a boutique/budget hotel chain to even think about going international. However, with Oyo it’s clear that the growth of the Indian hotel Industry is not going to be limited to only the country but in the near future, many international destinations too are going to be covered by Indian start-ups such as OYO and Treebo.

Not only start-ups but even big brands like ITC, Taj, and The Oberoi are all expanding their footprint in the country. It was interesting to see ITC’s new property ITC Royal Bengal become operational in Kolkata last month. Interestingly the property is located adjacent to one of ITC’s other properties, the Sonar. For the common man it may seem like a weird thing to do for a brand to open another multi-storey hotel just in the middle of one of its own existing hotels and JW Marriot on the other side. Nonetheless, if news reports are to be believed then ITC Sonar and ITC Royal Bengal are not competing with each other but complement each other in many ways.

Similarly, Trident and The Oberoi are located just next to each other in Gurgaon.  These as many other such examples prove that the hotel industry in India is a lucrative sector and brands as well as start-ups are not shying away from capitalizing on this opportunity. Besides room occupancy and stay, hotels are also monetizing their cuisine and activities thoroughly. Hotels within cities have become a popular destination to capture some unique art and paining exhibitions, book launches and workshops which attract thousands of people from within the city, the country and sometimes even international visitors.

More and more hotels have taken to social media to showcase their rooms, décor, common areas, special food and restaurants and even events. Most popular social media platform is Instagram especially when it comes to reaching newer audience from all over the world. Now with Instagram also making it possible to book rooms and events through its platform, the overall experience that the hotel industry in India offers to users is seamless and extremely user friendly. This has made people rest assured and book an amazing experience right from the comfort of their homes. Even the prices at which people can book are reasonable as due to digitalization and social media, middlemen are cut out of the system and the benefit is directly reaching the consumers.

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Andrew Thomas

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Andrew Thomas
Joined: February 6th, 2019
Articles Posted: 33

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