Global hospitality chain Hilton Hotels & Resorts, which has Chinese aviation/shipping conglomerate HNA Group and private equity major Blackstone as investors, is strengthening its India team in a big way.
Global hospitality chain Hilton Hotels & Resorts, which has Chinese aviation/shipping conglomerate HNA Group and private equity major Blackstone as investors, is strengthening its India team in a big way. The NYSE-listed hotel company has brought on board experienced hospitality executives from Marriott International and Starwood Hotels & Resorts to head various key positions in India.
To start with, Hilton has appointed former Marriott International's India development head Navjit Ahluwalia as senior vice president and country head – India. DNA Money had first reported this development in its edition dated January 10, 2018. Ahluwalia, who has assumed office earlier this week, will report directly to Alan Watts, executive vice president and president, Hilton, Asia Pacific. Ahluwalia will oversee Hilton’s 33 hotels trading and under development, including the recently opened Conrad Bengaluru, while leading the company’s growth strategy in the country.
“India is swiftly becoming one of the fastest growing travel and tourism markets in the world. As we seek to rapidly expand in the country, there is a need to grow our leadership team to ensure we continue to deliver best-in-class hospitality, in addition to ramping up our pipeline. Having recently joined Hilton myself, I am excited to embark on the next chapter of our journey in India with Navjit and Jatin, both industry veterans well-known for their accomplishments,” said Watts.
Another Marriott veteran Jatin Khanna will be joining Hilton India team in the first week of February as vice president and head of operations, India, reporting to Ahluwalia. Khanna was earlier overseeing Marriott operations in Bangalore region and prior to that was general manager for JW Marriott in Pune.
Joining Hilton at an exciting time in the Indian hospitality sector, Ahluwalia said, “India will offer the greatest growth opportunities as our demographics come of age, giving a new fillip to domestic consumption and taking advantage of rising travel the world over. As a sector, we will also contribute strongly to job creation and a global leader like Hilton is ideally positioned to create unique value. I look forward to expanding the Hilton footprint in the country and to working closely with Jatin to continue creating exceptional experiences for our guests.”
Both Ahluwalia and Khanna will be based in Hilton’s India regional office in Gurgaon.
An experienced Starwood Hotels & Resorts executive has been roped in already as head of destination marketing and by March this year a senior industry resource will come on board to lead the communications department.
The hotel chain has been strengthening its national sales team since 2016 and currently has 45 executives on its corporate payroll selling all Hilton hotels in India. While the development team has three executives lead by Kaushik Vardharajan, vice president development – India, new members are likely to join the operations team after Khanna joins office. Given the growing employee strength in the India operations, Hilton may also look to get a larger space for its corporate headquarters in the National Capital Region.
Hilton currently has 17 operational hotels under the Hilton, Conrad, DoubleTree, Garden Inn and Hampton brands. The company recently opened its second Conrad branded hotel in Bangalore and another three new hotels are scheduled to open at various intervals in this year. The hotel chain's pipeline in India currently stands at 14 hotels under various stages of development.
The Indian hospitality market has started looking up since last year with hotels witnessing occupancy levels of anything between 65% to 80% depending on markets being operated in. Encouraged by the overall optimism, industry players are collectively working on improving the average room rates (ARR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR). This is in turn also helping hotel asset owners to relook at newer developments across various lucrative markets in the country thereby presenting a huge opportunity for Indian and international hotel chains to further expand their footprint/ network in the country.
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