AccorHotels eyeing 75 hotels in India by 2022

French hospitality giant AccorHotels is hoping to cross the 15,000 keys mark with 75 properties in the country by 2022 even as it is mulling bringing leisure brands Banyan Tree and Angsana to India, a top official of the company said. “We have a pipeline of 24-25 new hotels that will come up in India over the next three to four years. Currently, we operate around 9,000 keys spanning nine brands in 50 hotels across in 22 cities of India,” Jean-Michel Casse, the chief operating officer (COO), India and South Asia, AccorHotels, told media. According to him, the upcoming properties include India’s first Raffles property in Udaipur, ibis Rajarhat in Kolkata, Grand Mercure in Gift City of Ahmedabad and Mercure Devaaya in Goa (rebranding of an existing hotel). Talking about the Telangana market he said, it currently has nearly 900-1000 keys in Hyderabad between two Novotel hotels – Airport and HICC – along with one Mercure in Banjara Hills and one ibis in Hitech City. “We feel the Hyderabad market can accommodate another ibis property. We are studying the market,” he said. In Andhra Pradesh, it now has one Novotel hotel each in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada and also manages Bheemili resort. It will also be managing the proposed convention center and hotel to be developed by Varun Group in Amaravati for which an EoI was inked in the presence of AP CM Chandrababu Naidu in Vijayawada on Sunday. “Work on the convention center should start by end of Q1 in 2019 and will take another two years to develop. The hotel should take another 1-2 years for completion,” Casse explained. He said the group envisions the continued growth of Novotel and ibis brands in the country along with the growth of its Raffles, Fairmont, and Sofitel brands. For Fairmont and Sofitel it sees growth in markets like Mumbai, Gurugram, Delhi, Bengaluru, and Goa, among others, he explained.