Marriott wants to double hotel count in India

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Marriott-hotel-India

Arne Sorenson, president and CEO of Marriott International, explains the development issues of the hotel chain growth

« We are likely to go from 100 to 200 in a handful of years» he declared in May 2018. But Sorenson is very aware that India is a big economy with a large population, hence he underlines the importance of the strength of the Indian economy: « It will drive business travel and will also generate leisure travel as people would like to take vacations ». GDP is then at the heart of growth strategies.

Marriott’s policy would be increasing their presence in resorts and religious destinaions. They bank on the opening of new airports which will help intensify tourism and buisness travels in existing destinations.

The CEO also observes that occupancy in Indian hotels is at a level that hasn’t been seen before, which is very encouraging for the future. However, they need more actions in order to reach a threshold similar to average countries where tourism and hospitality is around 10% of GDP whereas it’s near 6% in India.

According to him, the solution lie in procedures :« We want to see policies that help easier development. We need 60 permits to open and develop a hotel, which takes a lot of time, bureaucracy, and expense. Easier the policy, the faster a hotel can open up».