Questions across 6 calls

Sanjay Sethi

Firm not listed in source transcripts

Chalet Hotels Limited

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Dec24.pdf · 2025-01-30

Karan, thank you. Look. Our MMR RevPAR has grown about between 6% and 7%, largely on the back of an ADR strategy. We did let go of some business, which were low-paying business during the period, for long-term reasons. A 13% growth in the average room rate for the Mumbai metropolitan region is an extremely healthy rate. Our occupancies continue to be in the mid-70s, even in MMR, which is a healthy occupancy to have. In other cities, our occupancies are at 66%, which has improved by 2%, but then the combined RevPAR growth for us is 16%. Even on an occupancy basis, if you were to look at our overall portfolio, we're largely flattish. Add to that the aggressive growth on the rates, throwing up a RevPAR of 16%. I think we've done a good and satisfactory job. To your question about new supply. You're right. And I've maintained that there's some serious competition coming in place with the new hotel at the airport in Mumbai. They have a total inventory of 450 rooms, out of which around 200 are in the state that will be opened in the near future. We are very confident that the partnership with Marriott with a very strong distribution, sales and loyalty program will continue to get us the premium in that market. We are confident that we will continue to be #1 on the RevPAR basis there. And we are also confident that, in the coming year, we will continue to have growth at JW Marriott Sahar.

So yes, I do expect growth in the foreign travel. And I actually alluded to one major change that's going to happen in the coming year which is going to support that, which is the airport expansion that we'll see in Bombay. And I would like to elaborate on this for everyone's benefit. I think it will be useful for everyone to understand. Here is, my perspective on the new airport. As and when that opens at Navi Mumbai, the -- 2, 3 things will happen. Number one, the cargo will be split between the 2 airports. I don't have a ratio of how it's going to be split, but even if it splits 50 -50, you're still creating major capacity opportunity at the island city airport, which is the main airport. Second, the passenger traffic will also split between the 2 airports. And people who need to then travel to the mainland side will prefer the Navi Mumbai airport, but people whose purpose of visit is the island city will come to the island city. And therefore, again because the people are going to go to the other airport for the Navi Mumbai side, there will be spare capacity created in the main island city airport. It does 2, 3 things. Number one, it makes it easier for travelers to come in and out because flight seats capacity will be augmented. Second, the airlines -- a lot of the international airlines have had trouble finding slots, so the international carriers have not had slots in Bombay since COVID actually. Now with this split, it will create an opportunity where they can let out more slots to both domestic and international airline carriers, which will create an opportunity for direct flights from the U.S., both East and West Coast, which I think will support further growth on the foreign travellers. Having said that, whilst your percentages remained flat, absolute numbers are up, so we must be conscious of that, of -- not by a big margin, but they're up 5% over last year. So your number of foreigner room nights in Q3 this year was 72,684 versus 69,326 room nights, foreign room nights, last year. So that's, I think, a key takeaway. The other is, look, domestic traffic is growing and it continues to grow very strongly. And we are very confident that will support growth for all our hotels. I hope I've answered everything that you've asked for.

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Sep24.pdf · 2024-10-25

Hi Vikas, thank you for your question. As you know, we don't give forward -looking numbers, but you'll also know that the H2 typically in our industry is significantly better than H1, we expect that sort of trend to continue. But it looks like we are good for decent Q3 and Q4.

Sure. So look, I haven't seen the reports that you are referring to, but I think Mumbai for us reported a 7% growth in ADR, which is a healthy growth given that we were trying to stabilize the Powai hotel. We've also had new supply that's come into the Navi Mumbai market. So to some extent, there is slightly stronger competitive environment in the Navi Mumbai. Of course, the Navi Mumbai hotel of ours is not a very large hotel, 150 rooms. So the impact will be in the overall scheme will be that much lower. But I think a 7% growth in a quarter where we had extreme weather conditions, including flooding, where we saw softening up of September. In fact, the September first 20 days were pretty weak. And while September numbers are not really out from the consult ants, I think we see that we saw a bit of a disappointing September that went by. However, the last 10 day of September picked up very, very aggressively, and we were able to sort of close the month reasonably well. In terms of the numbers of growth. I think we've had a balanced growth between JW Sahar and Westin Powai in terms of rate. Powai has also improved occupancies Marriott Executive Apartment hasn't had a growth on ADR, but have grown on the occupancy side. And the Four Points by Sheraton has had an ADR growth of 5% and given the competitive environment that it is in, with occupan cy, 83% and ADR growth of 5%, I think the hotel has held out very well in those competitive landscape and maintained its leadership position with a strong margin.

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Jun24.pdf · 2024-07-26

Archana, good to have you back. Look, we've just announced this morning that we have had a committee approval to conclude a process for acquisition of a land parcel in Goa. Those details have been put up in a notice and I referred to them in my opening statement. Just as a very quick macro overview on this transaction. It's a 11-acre site on the beach front and we expect to get about 188 bays converting to about 170-odd rooms. This acquisition opportunity comes with approvals on the plot already. So our time to have shovels in the ground post-acquisition will be very short. Goa as you know seems to be a very strong market.

So these are all tactical initiatives that are taken depending on market conditions, Archana. When we see months that are slightly stretched, we tend to, in advance, decide to go with the occupancy-led strategies to fill up the hotel. But Hyderabad had another thing at play. We added a new hotel, the second hotel, which is 100% occupancy. So blended occupancy for Hyderabad will show higher growth than last year because of the new hotel with 100% occupancy at play over here.

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Mar24.pdf · 2024-05-14

Vikas, thank you for your question. Yes. So look, on pricing, overall, whilst we've shown growth is about 5% for the quarter, our same-store base ADR growth is actually 8%. And for the year, our ADR growth is 17%. In the Mumbai metropolitan region, the 2 hotels that we are following our occupancy route, one of them is a Powai hotel, which is 777 rooms and the other is where we're maintaining and ensuring that we retain that market share is Four Points By Sheraton in Vashi. These 2 hotels largely, we are either protecting market share or increasing occupancies as a strategy. And I think it's in line with our plans. From our perspective, overall growth for Mumbai is 14% for the year. And for the hotels in other cities, it's about 23% with a blended ADR increase of 17%, which continues to be an extremely healthy rate growth.

Vikas, you're right the base has increased significantly. I mean we've had 2 consecutive years of rate growth and almost 8 quarters of rate growth. There will be the base effect that will come into play. That's happening to a certain extent. And then quarter 4 was already extremely good quarter last year , as a quarte r. And therefore, there will be those effects that will continue to happen. I think what we should look at is, India is cyclical in nature in the annual cycle itself, which is the seasonal impact, non-seasonal impact. The clear opportunity for headroom for growth will continue to be in lower rate months going forward. And on a blended basis, I think we'll continue to deliver good rate growths. And our focus was to make sure that we continue to be market leaders, and we continue to protect our market share in each of these markets. Each hotel will need their different strategy, and that's what's playing out.

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Dec23.pdf · 2024-01-25

Look, we don't give individual city ARRs because then it becomes sensitive information within the comp set that we have. So , we're sort of clubbing the ADRs for Mumbai together and the rest of the cities. We've had largely 4% growth in MMR on the average room rates and all of it almost driven by the JW Sahar. And then on the Powai hotel, where we focus on occupancies, given that's a 777 key property , we focus ed on occupancies, we've been able to drive up occupancies quite sharply over there, resulting RevPAR growing at 21% in the Mumbai market. Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Pune have all done their bit but we are not in a position to give you a breakup of each city because they're just one hotel in each of these cities.

So, from our perspective, we've said that we'll target double -digit rate growth from corporate contracts and thus far the RFP process, the contracts have been negotiated is in the range of 12% to 20%.

Chalet Hotels Limited CC-Sep23.pdf · 2023-10-25

So, Archana, thank you for your question. Number one, we will not be speaking about advanced bookings for the coming months because we don't give forward-looking data. As far as the ICC World Cup is concerned , we get the bookings as they come in . There is no specific team or anything staying with our hotels. So, whatever we get is potential visitors who are coming for the World Cup events and matches. But there is no way to keep track of that. In any case, I don't expect that to be a very large number for any hotel in the city. To begin with, it's a one day or one-and-a-half-day sort of a stay. Number two, most of the visitors for the matches are locals of the city . And number three, unless you have a team staying with you, we don't have any block booking coming in at one shot.

So, Archana, we have seen some traction, in fact, fairly decent traction build up on the Bangalore one and we do expect at least the new tower that we built to be completely leased out over the next few months. We are not so concerned about that. There is a smaller building of 300 odd thousand square feet which is the old Inorbit Mall. We haven't seen any LOI or closure on that one. However, we do have a few people who want to take up the whole space at one shot. So, while I don't want to fall into the trap of committing to closing that out in the near future, let's just wait and watch. I am pretty confident that we will be good in Bangalore. Powai, we have taken a conscious call not to rush the leasing, especially if the rates that we have targeted are not being met, and it's a question of closing that first anchor tenant. As soon as we do that, we are pretty sure that others will follow. There were two improvement projects that were connected with this particular leasing activity. One was beautification of the road leading up from L&T Junction to our hotel or the plot where the office is , and the second was the road widening . Both have been approved by the BMC. Work has started on the beautification of the road on the main road and then leading up to our gate. On the expansion site, it is BMC that has to execute it. We will wait for their start of the execution. Once that happens, we will see the access to the road to the site improve significantly. The other thing that's happening is the significant amount of Metro work happening around the approach for this particular site. That's also expected to conclude at least the physical work in the near future and whenever that sort of concludes and the Metro line opens, accessibility improves significantly also. But more importantly, we are pretty confident that in the next few weeks, we will see some signings happening in Powai too.