This year is supposed to be the Year of India, everyone says.
At the beginning of each year, numerous accolades such as this are bandied about by the media, and a good number can be ignored as filler and no more.
As the great satirical and investigate-journalism magazine Private Eye would have it, such columns would be written by Phillipa Space or Phil Space.
India, though, cannot be ignored. Not with a population of 1.46 billion, according to Worldometer. The country has a middle class, so says East Asia Forum, approaching 500 million, or roughly one-third of everyone living there.
Hotel News Now's freelance reporter in India, Chitra Balasubramaniam, has covered this unique country for us for more than a decade, and my colleagues and I learn so much about the hospitality industry there from her reporting.
The country is growing in importance as a domestic hotel market, an inbound market, a destination for global brands, and now an important outbound travel market.
In the last few months we have seen new Indian hotel brands, new stock exchange indices formulated to spur investment and recognition and quite a number of hotel firms undertaking initial public offerings and stock-exchange listing as the hospitality market matures.
Some of its hotel firms already are global superstars. And of course, we've seen a newer entrant in the space, Oyo Hotels & Rooms, make a big Western acquisition, with its purchase of G6 Hospitality.
Are you interested in any particular angle of how the hotel industry in India is gaining visibility? Let me know and I'll dig into it.
This time last year, I had just arrived home from my first trip to India. I was blown away by how epic it is —
and I think epic is the right word — and I only went to one region, Rajasthan.
There is a lot more of India, probably too much for one lifetime.
Read through our recent coverage about this country, and stay tuned for more to come.
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