Where Hotel Chains Are Booming in India

Larger cities as well as popular holiday and tourist destinations are among the markets where branded hotels are growing fastest in India. Uttarakhandi capital Dehradun leads the pack, adding almost 70 percent more hotel rooms over the past two fiscal years, arriving at more than 1,200 as of FY2023/24. Mumbai satellite town Navi Mumbai grew its capacity by almost 35 percent to approximately 1,650 branded rooms, followed by Agra, Jaipur and Udaipur. Also in the top 8 are major markets Mumbai and Goa, which boast around 15,000 and 9,000 branded rooms, respectively, and grew at rates between 9 percent and 12 percent.

According to the report by Hotelivate, average occupancy rates stayed highest in tier one cities at 73.6 percent, but reached 66 percent in tier 2 and 57.4 percent in tier 3. While in the past fiscal year, India had around 180,500 branded hotel rooms, this is expected to rise to almost 250,000 by fiscal year 2028/29 as the Indian chain hotel market is gathering steam. Again, Dehradun, Navi Mumbai and Amritsar are listed among the biggest growth markets until that date, as are Lucknow and Noida. Almost 50 percent of the growth until 2028/29 is projected to take place in tier 3 cities. 42 percent is expected in the North of the country and almost 30 percent in its western part.