SAMHI Hotels to Surge Existing 3000-keys Room Inventory by 30% in 2019

GOLDMAN SACHS-backed SAMHI Hotels Pvt. Ltd. is on an expansion spree to increase its daily available inventory for sale from 3,000 to 4,000 rooms, registering a healthy 30% surge on the back of its acquisition of Premier Inn portfolio in 2017 and also the acquisition and subsequent rebranding of several hotels to Holiday Inn Express.

This increase in inventory, according to the company, is one of the highest ever by any Indian hotel ownership company in a single year.

Speaking about the development, Ashish Jakhanwala, Founder & CEO, SAMHI, said, “Indian hotel industry is showing strong signs of recovery and at the same time is also maturing to allow better risk-adjusted returns to the investors. The growth of aviation, expansion of office spaces across key Indian cities and increasing the propensity for Indians to travel both for business and leisure is supporting a strong demand growth for hotels. However, the industry continues to be operationally intensive.”

The industry has been reported to be in severe distress and with many of the companies going through the bankruptcy process. This has attracted the attention of several investors looking for distress acquisition opportunities.

“Many investors just look at the size of distress while acquiring assets. We, however, believe in evaluating the potential future opportunity and not just the discount due to distress. Over years we have demonstrated the ability to reposition and turnaround several hotel assets that we acquired. We believe such opportunities will continue to fuel our growth in the near term” said Jakhanwala.

The company had earlier indicated an investment of INR 500 cr to boost their inventory including acquisition and the turnaround expenses and it confirmed that it is well on its way to execute on that plan. According to the company, by Q1 FY2020, SAMHI will have over 4,000 rooms available for sale across hotels in India and operated by Marriott, IHG, and Hyatt.