Hospitality sector bounces back from pandemic onslaught; yet hotel bookings fall by 4% indicating economy slowdown

Mumbai, Nov. 7: In one of the indicators of the Indian economy has slowed down, a fall in hotel bookings by close to 4% has been observed between April to September this year.

Data from JLL India, a global company providing real estate services across segments, shows that Quarter-on-Quarter, there is a dip in hotel bookings in the six Indian cities by almost 3.8%. An indication of the Indian economy getting revived and slowing down.

The fall was witnessed in Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) in Q3 2022 (July to September) as compared to Q2 2022 (April to June). “This is due to reduced corporate travel amidst long weekends and festivals,” reasoned JLL’s Hotel Momentum India. The geographies covered include Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi and Goa.

Though the sectoral report claims holidays as the reason. A look at the public holidays shows that between April to June there were only three public holidays during weekdays as compared to half a dozen between July to September. Secondly, the same report states that the demand for hotel rooms across business cities remained strong driven by Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) despite long weekends.

Economic analysts from across the globe have substantially revised India’s economic growth. For example, Moody’s Investors Service slashed India’s Gross Domestic Product growth to slow from 8.3% in 2021 to 7.7% in 2022 and further fall to 5.2% in 2023. Similarly, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development forecast indicated the economy to decline to 5.7% in 2022 and further decelerate to 4.7% growth in 2023.

On the other hand, the hospitality sector certainly bounced back from the pandemic onslaught with 89.6% Year-on-Year growth in Revenue Per Available Room in Q3 2022. In India, the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was between mid-March 2021 to mid-June 2021 and the third wave peaked sometime in January this year.

JLL anticipates the ongoing quarter to be busy on the back of weddings and vacation season, along with business travel.

Meanwhile, only between July to September this year, deals to introduce 4,282 rooms or keys in 54 hotels were inked, a 63.2% increase as compared to the corresponding period last year.