Sanjay Sethi, MD & CEO, Chalet Hotels shared his outlook on occupancy growth and the festive season demand. According to Sethi while the F&B is doing extremely well in the festive season, there was a drop in the hotel occupancy during Dussehra and Diwali.
However, Q2 was a very gratifying quarter, ‘In Q2 the hospitality division ended up with revenues 9% higher than Q2 of FY20 and the EBITDA was also 8% higher compared to Q2FY20. Overall, our EBITDA for H1 is 14% higher’, he says this growth came in in spite of 120 rooms being out of action at Westin in Powai and the banquet hall being out of action for 39 days for renovation
Commenting on the F&B demand, Sethi said that the F&B revenue in Q2 was up 18% as compared to Q2 of FY20 and September reported 32% higher revenues than Q2FY20. September turned out to be a brilliant month with average rooms rates also hitting an average of Rs.9070, which is 10% higher than FY20 average room rates.
With EBIDATA being up 99% YoY, high RevPAR and higher room rates, how sustainable does this growth seem? Sethi says,’ Despite Q2 being challenging due to mid-week holidays in August, we have managed to record good revenues and EBITDA numbers, which is very encouraging as the business is back to normal and the brilliant rebound in occupancy in September is extremely encouraging for the trend going forward.’
After the easing of COVID restrictions, domestic travelers have been discovering India like never before with 156% growth in domestic travel in Q2 compared to pre-COVID levels with most of it being business travel, however there are challenges in foreign travel with recovery of only 64% owing mainly to visa challenges for UK and other European countries and flight seat capacity challenges for flights coming in from the US.
Commenting on the price hikes Sethi said that the price hikes are to cover three years of inflation and therefore it looks sharp and if averaged out over 4-5 years, it’s a reasonable rise.
