TravTalk India Online Magazine
With growth of the portfolio a priority, AM Hotel Kollection is on schedule to announce at least four more launches before the end of the year. It is also aggressively building onsite facilities to cater to niche as well as large weddings at its hotel locations.
Hazel Jain
The hospitality landscape in India continues to be uncertain, but it has also brought new perspectives and opportunities, says Randhir Narayan, Director and CEO, AM Hotel Kollection. “We have seen growth in boutique and experiential hotel landscape.There is reasonably good opportunity in investing at holiday destinations such as beaches, hills and jungle retreats. They have seen quite a few transactions and investments and new openings both big and small. We see good opportunity for hotels between 25 to 70 keys, especially the ones builtkeeping in mind their surroundings,”
he says. AM Hotel Kollectionis a collection of individually-owned, independent boutique hotels and resorts. Each hotel has its own character and vibe. It is in the process of adding to its collection of hotels. Recently, it has added six new locations: Gurgaon, Goa, Jodhpur, Udaipur, Kufri and Panchkula. It is now operational in 15 cities across India.
Narayan however adds that there is trouble for large inventory city hotels.“The ones in luxury segments are still benefitting with social events but the ones in budget space will have to improvise in the medium term. Perhaps they may have to look at converting themselves to mixed-use properties or becoming serviced apartments, as there is significant drop in transient corporate business,” he explains.
Growth of the portfolio is a priority for the company. Narayan says, “We are on schedule to announce at least four more launches before the end of the year. We have developed curated and destination weddings. Our select hotels have achieved good success in first half of this year. We are aggressively building onsite facilities to cater to niche as well as large weddings at our hotels.”
He adds that travel agents are offered special rates and packages including bundled offers, curated experiences, discounts, benefits on extended length of stays and higher commissions on incremental room nights. Sharing details on this is ShashiRazdan, COO, AM Hotel Kollection. He says, “Engagements with travel agents has been continuous. Regular educational trips have been organised for them and weekly meetings are done with sales team as well as unit managers.”
Explaining the ethos of the company, SanchitWahi, CMO, AM Hotel Kollection, says, “We are a hotel services platform that provides asset owners with management expertise and effective end-to-end operational service solutions. Our talent pool assists at every stage of development – from inception to project completion and operationalisation. We cater to premium and experiential segments of business.”
