India is a country on the move, and there is huge scope for global branded hotel chains to take advantage of increased domestic travel and a rise in inbound international visitors.
According to the World Bank, the gross domestic product of India, which has the world’s largest population of approximately 1.42 billion, measured $3.39 trillion in 2022, having grown by almost 28% from five years ago when its GDP stood at $2.65 trillion.
Approximately 6.19 million international travelers came to India in 2022, according to an April report from India’s Ministry of Tourism. The number of inbound tourists to India was still affected by COVID-19 restrictions that year, but much better than 2021, when only 1.52 million visitors came to India. Pre-pandemic, the total number of international travelers was almost 11 million in 2019.
Many global hotel firms have been present in India for decades, but most hotels in this country of 1.15 million square miles are independent — making up roughly two-thirds of the total hotel count in its five major hotel markets.
The five major hotel markets in India — Bangalore (450 hotels), New Delhi (413), Mumbai (319), Chennai (238) and Kolkata (139) — have a collective 1,519 hotels in them, according to CoStar data.
Of that number, 977 or more than 64% are independent hotels.
Despite IT hub Bangalore having the most hotels, independent hotels make up 58.4% of its total hotels count. In New Delhi, independent hotels make up 70% of the total hotels count.
The Indian hotel chain with the most hotels in the five cities is FabHotel with 110 properties, followed by Oyo Rooms with 93. Both operate in the budget sector.
Among the top five domestic hotel firms in each of the cities, these two hotel firms make up more than 60% of the domestic hotel assets across those cities.
Oyo Rooms is almost absent in Mumbai, where it has only three hotels.
International branded hotels are led by Marriott International, which has 53 hotels across the five cities. Accor comes in second with 26 hotels, less than half of Marriott’s number.
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