Indian Hotels Company Achieves 300-Hotel Milestone Two Years Ahead of Schedule

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) aimed for 300 hotels by 2025-26. But the parent company of Taj Hotels reached this goal two years early. The hotel group now has 309 hotels by the end of the 2023-24 financial year.

IHCL has aggressively expanded its footprint with 52 hotel signings and 34 openings last year, a significant increase from its 2022 numbers.

A significant contributor to the increased numbers during 2023 has been the partnership that IHCL has signed with Tree of Life Resorts & Hotels. Under the agreement, the company is offering its marketing and distribution network to the 14 properties of Tree of Life. 

IHCL has also ventured in East and Northeast India, with properties in Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal.

The hotel group has also been focusing on large-format airport hotels. Its leisure and spiritual destination offerings also received a boost, with hotels signings in Bekal, Alibaug, Ayodhya and Haridwar.  

The company is betting big on its budget brand Ginger. It is the second-largest hotel brand under IHCL, after Taj. While Taj has 109 hotels in its portfolio, there are 90 hotels under the Ginger brand. In November last year, executive vice president (new businesses and hotel openings) Deepika Rao stated that IHCL was looking to have 86 operational hotels under the budget brand by the end of 2025-26 financial year. It currently has 64. 

It is also planning to bring a full-service brand in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities to tap the mass market outside Indian metro cities. 

Rao said that the company’s expansion will increase domestically over the coming few years while it will foray into “select international markets.”

IHCL is also eyeing international expansion with new projects coming up in Dhaka, Bhutan, Nepal, and Frankfurt.

The openings and signings in 2023 across the various IHCL brands include:

Taj

The company signed 12 hotels under the luxury Taj brand. These include a 400-key airport at the Delhi International Airport, a 350-room hotel in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, a hotel in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, and two properties in Bhutan. 

Five Taj hotels were also opened:

• Taj Sewai, Ranthambore in Sawai Madhopur, Rajasthan
• Taj Taal Kutir in New Town, West Bengal
• Taj Guras Kutir Resort & Spa in Gangtok, Sikkim
• Taj The Trees, Mumbai in Maharashtra
• Taj Gandhinagar Resort & Spa in Gandhinagar, Gujarat

The company now has 84 hotels operating under the Taj brand with 25 properties in the pipeline. 

SeleQtions

IHCL currently has 26 operational SeleQtion properties and 14 more under development. In 2023-24, 10 SeleQtion hotels were signed, including a 175-key hotel in Surat, Gujarat, a property in Bandra, Mumbai, a hotel in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, and an 88-room resort in Naukuchiatal, Uttarakhand. 

The six openings are:

• Scenic Munnar in Munnar, Kerala
• Ekante Bliss in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh
• Gorbandh Palace in Jaisalmer, Rajasthan
• WOW Crest in Indore, Madhya Pradesh
• The Crown in Bhubaneswar, Odisha
• The Yellow House in Anjuna, Goa

Vivanta

In 2023-24, IHCL maintained the momentum of 2022-23 with regard to the upscale Vivanta brand. While in the 2022-23 financial year, IHCL signed nine hotels under the Vivanta brand, the 2024 financial year saw this number increasing marginally to 10. These include hotels in Talegaon, Pune; Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh; Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh; and Haridwar, Uttarakhand during the period. 

Like the year before, three Vivanta hotels also opened the 2024 financial year, of which two are located in India, and one in Nepal. 

• Vivanta Chitwan in Bharatpur, Nepal
• Vivanta Arunachal Pradesh in Tawang, Arunachal Pradesh
• Vivanta Jammu, City Centre in Jammu and Kashmir

The company currently operates 30 Vivanta hotels with 26 in the pipeline. 

Ginger

With 64 Ginger hotels currently operational, IHCL signed six Ginger hotels in 2023-24, including a 300-key hotel at Goa’s new Manohar International Airport (MOPA), and one in Dibrugarh, Assam. With this there are 26 Ginger hotels in the pipeline.

The six Ginger hotel opening during this period were:

• Ginger Durgapur in Durgapur, West Bengal 
• Ginger Mumbai Airport in Mumbai, Maharashtra
• Ginger Gangtok, Bojoghari in Gangtok, Sikkim
• Ginger Noida, Sector 133 in Noida, Uttar Pradesh
• Ginger Kochi, MG Road in Kochi, Kerala
• Ginger Ahmedabad in Changodar, Gujarat