India saw the highest growth rates for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts in 2024 in terms of new hotel signings and executions of contracts than in any other market worldwide, Geoff Ballotti, president and CEO of the world’s largest hotel franchising chain, told ET. “And I see how big an opportunity India is when your prime minister mentions tourism as one of the top drivers of growth,” said Ballotti in an interview. He spoke to ET at HVS Anarock HOPE 2025 conference in Goa.
“What prime minister (Narendra) Modi is doing here is similar to what’s happening in the US. Infrastructure spends are fuelling our growth in the US. Our nation’s roads have not kept up. Our nation’s bridges are crumbling, and our nation’s airports need more investments. Your prime minister sees the same thing here,” he added. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is the world’s largest hotel franchising company by number of properties. It has 9,267 properties under franchising arrangements worldwide, and it operates in 95 countries. It has nearly 70 franchised hotels in India with more than 5,500 rooms. There are another 50 hotels in the pipeline that are in various stages of development in the country.
Wyndham’s global owner retention rates reached a record level of 95.7% last year, and India’s retention rate is higher than 97%, said Ballotti. Ballotti said the chain is seeing a ‘real renaissance’ of demand emerging for its brands in the country.
“We have doubled our India portfolio since 2018. We have about 70 hotels today,” he said. “In terms of signings and executions of new contracts we saw record growth rates in India last year with hotel openings seeing a 22% year-on-year growth and hotel signings growing by around 25%. There are countries that have a larger mass (of hotels) like the US and China, but India saw the highest growth rates percentage wise,” he added.
He said what encouraged him the most about India last year was the double-digit revenue per available room growth. “Last year’s revenue per available room growth of about 10.5% was really encouraging. You don’t always see this globally,” said Ballotti.
“That revenue per available room growth here is being driven by demand, occupancy and by pricing power or average daily rate. Often, in certain countries, it grows only by pricing power or rate. The important thing to assess for the health of tourism is to see that the occupancies which grew from about 66% nationwide to 70% last year are projected to grow at 72% this year by HTL. HTL is further predicting this to grow to 74% in 2026. So, optimism abounds,” he added.
Wyndham opened a record 68,700 rooms globally last year, representing 4% year-over-year growth, including nearly 28,000 in the US, which also grew 4% year-over-year. Its development pipeline grew 2% sequentially and 5% year-over-year to a record 252,000 rooms.