The Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) remains cautiously optimistic about the outlook on luxury hotel space.

“We are definitely not seeing the double-digit growth that we expected. Having said that, we have had a good July. After a week of holidays, we are back in August. I am cautiously optimistic about the outlook for us," Puneet Chhatwal, MD and CEO of IHCL, told CNBC-TV18.

The company is not just relying on spending. "We are focused on increasing our market share, revenue per available room, penetration, revenue growth Index and all the other parameters available to us in the food and beverage segment. Given our pan-India presence, we stand a good chance to somehow keep moving in the right direction,” he stated.

Speaking about the mood on the ground in second half of the year, Chhatwal said, “The festival seasons and long weekends are very important for resort business, especially with our Taj brand, we are the market leaders in the resort segment. We kind of have created destinations such as Goa and Kerala and we are very strong in these markets. We have the new one in Andaman and Nicobar Islands so I would encourage you to go and stay at the Havelock. Also the impact of the floods, which we have recently seen and heavy rainfall, will be gone by the time the festival season starts.”

The company is not concerned about margins. “I don’t think we need to worry about margins. We posted our first quarter results almost a month ago and we had a 300 basis points margin increase. We had the best EBITDA margin in the last 10 years. So I do not see it as a big bottleneck. But the ability to charge is at the moment a bit under pressure,” he observed.

First Published:Aug 21, 2019 5:01 PM IST