Online travel aggregator EasemyTrip proposes to open a 5-star hotel in Ayodhya, looking to cash in on the rush of tourists and pilgrims following the inauguration of the Ram temple.
"We are looking at 150 rooms in the new hotel in Ayodhya in area of one lakh square feet. There will be planning and then construction will start and it will take around three years for the hotel to start," Vinod Kumar Tripathi, Independent Director, Easy Trip Planners, told Moneycontrol.
In a meeting on February 11, the company's Board approved the proposal to for a 5-star hotel in Ayodhya, which will come up within a kilometer from the temple, the company said in an exchange filing.
The board approved the proposal to open a 5-star hotel “through investment of an amount of up to INR 100 crores in Jeewani Hospitality Private Limited, a company under incorporation for 50% of the aggregate share capital of the said company on a fully diluted basis through swap i.e., fresh issuance of the company’s own equity shares on preferential basis”, the company told exchanges on February 11.
Tripathi said that Jeewani Group and EaseMyTrip have come together in a joint venture to form Jeewani Hospitality in which EaseMyTrip will take 50 percent stakes through share swap which means that Jeewani Hospitality will get equivalent quantities of shares in EaseMyTrip.
The company said that religious tourism has witnessed Rs 143.9 crore tourists in 2022 and the places of religious tourism earned Rs 1.34 lakh crore in the same year. The sector is expected to generate a revenue of 5,900 crore by 2028, creating 14 crore temporary and permanent jobs by 2030.
EaseMyTrip co-founder Prashant Pitti recently told Moneycontrol that they were seeing strong demand for Ayodhya and Lakshadweep.
"The demand is high but availability is not enough at the moment. For the Lakshadweep packages the company introduced recently, we are seeing enquiries as well as conversions," Pitti said after the company announced its December quarter earnings.
The company reported a 9.6 increase in net profit at Rs 45.6 crore in the December quarter on the back of robust growth in travel demand.
Pitti said that the non-air segment registered good growth during the quarter.
The company is also looking to acquire companies for which it got the board’s approval to raise Rs 100 crore.
However, due to the investments in the recent acquisitions. the company revised its guidance for the profit before tax (PBT) target for FY24.
"We may have to revise the PBR target of Rs 250 crore to Rs 220 crore. We may fall short of the PBT target because of the acquisition cost," he said.
On the company's decision to stop selling packages for Maldives, Pitti said that it was one of the good selling packages for the company. "But we are standing by the decision the company took."
On February 12, the stock closed at Rs 48.90 on NSE, down 4.3 percent.
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