Louvre bullish on budget hotels

With a view of better revenues and occupancy levels, French hotels giant Louvre Hotels Group looks to expand its budget (business) property lines in India, with plans to open five hotels here, by the end of this year.

“The year 2015 has been good for hotels, thanks to increased domestic travel. The hospitality space in India has been growing well, and we are motivated to expand here. By the end of 2016, we will have five more hotels opened around the country,” Shashi Razdan, Director of Sales and Marketing (South Asia), Louvre Hotels Group, told Deccan Herald.

While only one of the planned hotels will be a Royal Tulip — a Louvre luxury five-star brand — coming up at summer tourism hub Kufri, in Himachal Pradesh, the remaining will be a mix of four-star Golden Tulip, and three-star Tulip Inn properties, which would come up across Gujarat, West Bengal and Punjab. At present, the company runs 22 hotels in India (3,000 keys), two of which are Royal Tulip properties.

Among its offerings, the Louvre Group — owned by China’s Jinjiang International — is specifically keen to tap the business hotels space. Explaining that luxury hotels require greater operational costs, compared with smaller ones, Razdan said that occupancy is assured with the latter.

“Compared with luxury properties, budget hotels are doing better, since the cost of running the latter is low. Also, luxury hotels offer a lot of sophisticated amenities, which many guests may not make use of, while budget hotels have more functional and required facilities. Besides, there is higher investment needed for luxury hotels,” he said.

According to estimates, luxury hotels have clocked 60-65 per cent occupancy last year, while three- and four-star properties could muster around 70-72 per cent.