Indian Hotels eyes opening one hotel per month from April

Indian Hotels, an Indian hospitality company, is looking to launch one hotel per month beginning from this April. The company will remain in 8% margins guidance range.

Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and CEO, Indian Hotels, said, "We remain with our guidance of 8 percent over the business cycle and the improvement that we have seen this year, I do not see at this point of time any reason why we should not continue to improve with the same speed and at least the same expansion that we have witnessed in the last 12 months."

"I would not like to go to 250 basis points (bps) because we never did it this year up till now except in one quarter. That is possible in the weaker quarters but I think if we keep doing 2 percent year-on-year (YoY) basis then we would have achieved 8 percent in four years instead of five," he added.

Chhatwal further stated, "The guidance we have given to the market has been 15 hotels per annum and in the first year we have done 20. So that takes our pipeline to 30 properties. So we have 178 in our portfolio out of which 148 are in operation. Yes, I remember having said that we will now open one hotel a month commencing April and normally I have full faith and belief in all the stakeholders in the company especially my colleagues and management that they will make it happen."