Peter Fulton, Group President – EAME for Hyatt Hotels Corporation, is responsible for overseeing hotels in Europe, Africa and the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and was in India recently to launch a Hyatt Centric property in New Delhi. He spoke to Moneycontrol about the state of the industry after a trying two years, thanks to the pandemic, plans for the Hyatt to continue to expand across brands in India, and how and when he sees rates and occupancies bouncing back in the subcontinent. Edited Excerpts:
How have Hyatt’s plans evolved over the last two years in India?
Despite the challenges the industry faced with the onset of the pandemic, in 2022 Hyatt is on its way to accomplishing its goal of launching 11 new hotels in India across various brands that will cater to both leisure and business travellers.
Having recently launched two of these 11 hotels – Hyatt Regency Dehradun and Hyatt Centric Janakpuri New Delhi – we are now operating with 7,531 rooms spread across 34 hotels and eight distinct Hyatt brands in the country (Andaz, Alila, Hyatt, Hyatt Centric, Hyatt Place, Hyatt Regency, Grand Hyatt and Park Hyatt).
Our plan is to expand our brand footprint in India by more than 70% by 2023. With over 24 executed deals for hotels, we will be adding over 3,800 keys and more than 50 hotels to the brand’s existing portfolio by 2023, thereby crossing the milestone of over 50 hotels in the country.
The growth of our lifestyle portfolio in India is driven by the Hyatt Centric brand, which is a full-service lifestyle brand with hotels located in prime destinations and thoughtfully designed to enable exploration and discovery so guests never miss a moment of adventure. The brand has been created to connect guests to the heart of the action in the cities they are present in, and each Hyatt Centric hotel offers lifestyle experiences – with social spaces suited for guests to connect with others.
The Hyatt Centric brand is key to our growth plans in India – Hyatt Centric Janakpuri New Delhi is our third Centric hotel after Hyatt Centric Goa and Hyatt Centric Bangalore. By the end of 2022, the brand will have entered two new markets as we launch Hyatt Centric Juhu in Mumbai and Hyatt Centric Sector 17 Chandigarh.
The new hotels which are planned for this year under the Hyatt Place brand will see Hyatt entering five new regions with Hyatt Place Bodh Gaya, Hyatt Place Goa Candolim, Hyatt Place Vijayawada, Hyatt Place Jaipur Malviya Nagar, and Hyatt Place Bharuch.
In addition to this, under the Regency brand too, we recently launched Hyatt Regency Dehradun last month – our luxury property in Uttarakhand, and this will be followed by the opening of Hyatt Regency Jaipur Mansarovar this year.
How have you innovated?
The last couple of years saw us working towards reimagining spaces and creating a safer, reassuring environment for our guests to relax and work in, while preserving the guest experience Hyatt is famous for. The pandemic also inspired us to be more creative in how we extend our services and curate experiences for guests and customers.
In 2020, we launched Hyatt's Global Care & Cleanliness Commitment to strengthen our operations and resources towards colleague and guest safety. As part of this commitment, a trained hygiene and well-being leader or team was assigned at all locations to ensure that the hotel adheres to new operational protocols. We also understand that guests’ priorities have changed over the course of the pandemic and that it’s about offering choices to guests – whether that’s contactless check-in or room service delivered to avoid communal dining areas.
With ‘virtual’ being the new buzzword, preparing for hybrid events became an important measure to ensure guest safety and satisfaction. We launched Together by Hyatt in October 2021 as an important step in this direction. Together by Hyatt is designed to support planners at every step of the way as we reimagine what events can look like and collaborate to bring their vision to life, keeping attendee safety and wellbeing as top priorities. With hybrid events packages Hyatt uses technology to offer small to large-scale meetings across multiple Hyatt hotels not just in India, but also in Asia Pacific, Europe and the Middle East.
We also introduced Work from Hyatt, offering workations to guests over the summer, and saw a surge in demand off the back. Our initiative The Great Relocate also made it more affordable than ever to take a long stay in one of our hotels, for a similar amount you would pay for the average city-centre rent. We made this available to all our World of Hyatt members across Hyatt hotels in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia for a minimum period of 29 days.
Do you see overall industry prices rising – by when?
The hospitality sector in India has bounced back quickly and the recovery has been dynamic with some numbers being even better than 2019.
While leisure travel has already surpassed pre-pandemic numbers, we have also witnessed an increase in corporate travel enquiries. We definitely foresee industry prices rising up to older levels. Currently, however, the room rates continue to be readjusted as per the domestic travel market, so they’re still lower than pre-pandemic levels.
We are relatively optimistic for the upcoming quarters and believe that levels of occupancy will come back quicker than the rates and we’re looking to 2023-2024 before we see ourselves getting back to pre-pandemic levels.
How soon do you see MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions) business coming back? Foreign business?
Even as domestic business travel soars, international travel is playing its part in propelling the MICE segment in India.
With international travel opening up, this segment has started to pick up and we can conclusively predict its exponential rise. In fact, MICE could well witness its peak in 2022, returning to and exceeding the pre-pandemic demand for this vertical.
What’s your sense of how the industry in India has coped in recent years?
COVID-19 has fundamentally changed hospitality dynamics across the globe. Imminent lockdowns, the inability to travel, social distancing have all impacted the way consumers choose to socialize and interact today.
Nobody really knew what was happening or how it would translate across the world. For instance, with an immensely contagious disease like Ebola, the symptoms are so severe and apparent, that it can be contained and addressed instantly. But here, COVID-19 on the outset appeared just like a flu, so we were slow to realize the impact it could have. When lockdowns were finally implemented to help curb the spread, it was an elementary requirement that everyone stay at home – which meant the first big blow would be to the tourism sector which entails travel and hospitality.
Livelihoods were impacted; we had to let go of people either because we absolutely had to let go or because people decided this wasn’t for them anymore and that they could thrive in a place that was still essential such as supermarkets where there was still a huge amount of business coming in. Managing, understanding people, caring and empathising with them, looking out for them – engaging human capital – this was the biggest challenge and learning for us.
Is there a certain cross-section of the sector that has handled the pandemic better than the others, and if so, why?
I believe the food and beverage (F&B) segment within the hospitality sector was poised well to navigate the challenges that came in with the pandemic, and it allowed us to continue serving guests across the country while abiding by the new protocols.
What is the overall prognosis for tourism in India?
India continues to be a high-growth potential market for us at Hyatt. So, we see plenty of reasons for optimism around leisure travel – the demand for which was back to 2019 levels across Hyatt hotels in India toward the end of March, last year. We are also increasingly noticing the trend of ‘impulse travel’ with guests booking trips in a much shorter window than past years – average booking lead time is less than a month. We believe that despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, domestic travel will soar.
Weddings and events have been quick to pick up pace. Local destinations for weddings have become a growing preference in India, and the limitations on hosting these events at international destinations has also added to the uptick. This sector has particularly seen tremendous traction, and we’ve witnessed a steady increase in the number of queries and bookings for weddings all year long in 2021, and this first quarter of 2022 as well.
Can you share how your overall expansion plans are moving? Have they changed at all?
Almost all the owners and developers are razor focussed on leisure destinations for development and many have repeatedly conveyed to us that for the next few years their focus would be only on the leisure portfolio.
In India of the 24 openings slated over the next three years, a third will be focused on leisure and cultural destinations. This will add an additional dimension to our distribution in the country.
Overall, this is an exciting time for Hyatt as India is a key market for us and we have great plans for the country, which we feel will also bolster the tourism industry and attract more international tourists to India.
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