Hotels Expect 2-Yr Revenue Recovery Period

Real estate consultancy firm JLL, conducted a survey with 15 leading hotel operators in India having adequate presence across hotel segments in both business and leisure markets. According to the survey, only 20% of the operators believe that their hotels could bounce back to 2019 Revenue Per Available Room or RevPAR levels within 6 to 12 months. Whilst 60% believe that their portfolio should be back on 2019 levels between 13 and 24 months from now. Luxury hotel operators are expected to ramp-up much slower with some expecting that their portfolio may take more than 2 years to reach 2019 performance levels. Qualitatively, the survey also indicated that business travel is expected to reduce in the post COVID-19 world as companies will rationalize spending on travel, which could, in a way, benefit branded economy and midscale hotels. Currently, 47% of the operators expect to re-open their hotels for operation within 2 weeks of lifting of lockdown / travel restrictions by the respective state governments and 33% of operators expect to open within a week. Almost all operators believe that most hotels in their portfolio would need working capital infusion to continue or re-start their operations because the reserves have almost dried.