Lemon Tree Hotels expects 5-year golden period for hotels; says high occupancy levels driving rates

As COVID cases are now in check, India has resumed its scheduled international passenger flights after a gap of two years. Airlines have been allowed to operate around 3,200 flights to 43 destinations in 27 countries.

To understand what this means for key players in the sector, CNBC-TV18 caught up with Patanjali Keswani, Chairman & Managing Director at Lemon Tree Hotels, and Prashant Pitti, Co-Founder & Director at Easemytrip.Com.

First up, Keswani said that he expects to see a 5-year golden period for hotels. He said that occupancy now stands north of 70 percent, which is almost close to pre-COVID levels. He mentioned that because of the high occupancy levels, rates have gone up as well.

"We are close to pre-COVID now. So as a company we would normally do about 75 percent occupancy. It's obviously a trendline. So January was sub 50, mid-February started picking up and I would say now, we are north of 70 percent. So close to pre-COVID pricing is also picking up. Our occupancy is improving and our rates are improving as well," he said.

After two years of ban, India opens up over 3,000 international flights per week

Keswani stressed that retail is close to 60 percent of the company’s business at the moment. He expects the number to move above pre-COVID levels in the first half of FY23.

"Retail, which used to be 30 percent of our business, today it is close to 60 percent. So broadly, if I look at it for the hotel sector, I think we are going to come back to above pre COVID levels somewhere in H1FY23, which means there will be enormous occupancy rises and price rises for the sector in Q2," he said.

On its debt, he explained that the hotel chain aims to be debt-free by 2025-26.

Meanwhile, Pitti of EaseMyTrip mentioned that the rise in aviation prices has led to a fall in flight bookings over the last few weeks.

"In terms of demand, we have also seen that the number of bookings for the entire aviation industry has reduced by 10-15 percent in the last couple of weeks, because of the price rise," Pitti said.