Our Presence in South India is more than North India: Jean-Michel Casse

What is the expectation from Grand Mercure, Mysore?

Our expectation is to have a very good average room rate and high occupancy. We don’t go to a city to be second best. We need to be recognised as the place to be in, in Mysore. And I believe we have done all that it takes to be right up there. We have a great location and possibly one of the best partners. We have been involved in the process right from the designing stage. The property integrates local art and culture. The property has come out really well. It’s a fairly small inventory with 146 rooms. With our strong distribution network and loyalty programme we should be successful, provided we do things right in terms of product positioning.

What is the expected average room occupancy?

The average occupancy in Mysore will depend upon the growth of the city and State itself.  The average occupancy here is 60-65 per cent but I do believe we can do slightly better than that. More importantly, we would like to have a better average room rate. Thanks to our distribution network and our loyalty programme we should be able to do that. It takes a year to year and a half for a newly opened hotel to be at par with the market. Thereafter, we would expect to be at least 10 per cent higher than the market.

You are one of the biggest international brands to have opened in Mysore. How did you decide on Mysore?

It wasn’t our idea that we should be in Mysore. We had been in discussions with our partner, Brigade Hospitality, looking at opening another hotel. We have a great partnership with Brigade as Grand Mercure, Koramangla has been doing very well from the beginning. Jaishankar is passionate about Mysore and wanted to build here. He invited us to visit Mysore and see what Mysore was all about and then we all got involved as we were as excited as he was. Whether we would have come alone to Mysore, I cannot say. May be yes, may be no, may be later. We came because it was the desire of our partner and we believed with our expertise and his know-how we could do well.

What are your future plans for South India? How many more hotels are we looking at from Accor?

In Karnataka this is our 7^th hotel (with six in Bangalore) and we have another six hotels under active development including Ibis, Grand Mercure, Novotel and Formula 1 coming up in Bangalore. In a large city like Bangalore, having just one hotel means nothing. You cannot say that you have a presence there if you have only one hotel. It has so many hubs that it needs several hotels of the same brand. So we are looking at densifying tier-1 cities like Bangalore. We have one Novotel but we are looking at having three Novotels. From the present three Ibis, we are going to have five and similarly increase the number of Formula 1 hotels.

In Tamil Nadu, we have three hotels in Chennai at present. Another three to four are going to open this year under the brands Novotel, Ibis and Mercure. In Chennai by early next year we will have a network of 7-8 hotels.

In Hyderabad we already have 900 rooms. In the new state of Andhra Pradesh we have hotels under development. We have an existing Novotel in Vizag which is very successful. We have another Novotel resort opening in two months time on the coast in a small town called Bheemli near Vizag. Another Novotel is under development in Vijayawada.

Today our huge presence is in South India, actually. More than in North India.

Going forward, it is the Novotel brand that we are focussing on. The Novotel brand is very important for us. We are celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the first Novotel Hyderabad Convention Centre.

Novotel is also growing in the leisure sector. We opened Notovel Khopoli, in between Mumbai and Pune last year. Another two Novotels were opened in Goa. So now we have a presence in the leisure sector. In total we have 13 Novotels in India. The imaging and positioning is right. We have another 11 under development. We are for the first time stepping into the North East. We will have a Novotel opening in Guwahati by the end of the year. Early next year we will have another one in Shillong.

The core of the development currently is on upper mid-scale which is Novotel and economy which is Ibis. They are the most successful well established brands. But this said, we are very much interested in selecting cities and destinations for luxury brands such as Pullman and Sofitel. Right now we only have one Sofitel in Mumbai and a Pullman in Delhi but we would love to have a Sofitel in Delhi and another Pullman in Mumbai. The volume is going to come from Novotel and Ibis but in selected cities we would really aim to have luxury properties as well.

By 2020, how many hotels are you looking at?

We will have 45 hotels under operation by the end of the year from the current 38. We have another 35-40 under development so by 2020 we should have around 80 hotels under our seven brands – Sofitel, Pullman, Grand Mercure, Novotel, Mercure, Ibis and Formula 1.