Wedding bells send cash registers ringing at hotels, biz expected to be better than last year

Synopsis

Hotels and resorts are expecting a sizable uptick in business and revenues this quarter as the Indian wedding season starts.

Manbeer Choudhary's five-star hotel Noor Mahal in Haryana is nearly sold out for weddings till the end of March next year as people rush to venues that have more open spaces.

"On one of the booked dates, we are hosting 8-9 weddings. With 11 acres of land, we have multiple wedding venues and the capacity on outdoor weddings is 500 in the state. It's going to be a bumper season for the industry, a far cry from being down in the dumps months ago," said Choudhary, chairman and managing director, Jewels Group of Hotels who is also the president of Hotel and Restaurant Association of Haryana.

Hotels and resorts are expecting a sizable uptick in business and revenues this quarter as the Indian wedding season kickstarts. And they say it's going to be bigger and better than last year thanks to enhanced capacity limits, easing of restrictions and vaccination rates.

Accor hotels in markets such as Goa, Jaipur, Udaipur, Delhi and Hyderabad are completely blocked on all auspicious dates till the end of this year, said Rohit Chopra, regional director, sales and distribution for Accor India and South Asia. “Compared to last year when there were restrictions due to the pandemic on the number of people that could attend a wedding, this year, all big wedding markets are doing very well. People are slowly but surely warming up to the idea of going back to the old, big, fat wedding concepts while following all protocols,” he said.

ITC Hotels is seeing a ‘definite’ surge in wedding bookings for properties such as ITC Grand Bharat in Gurugram, ITC Grand Goa, ITC Rajputana in Jaipur and ITC Mughal in Agra.

Wyndham is seeing an uptick in bookings in Delhi, Gurugram, Chennai, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Neemrana, Udaipur, Ajmer and Bengaluru. "The average daily rates continue to gain momentum and are broadly in line with 2019 levels. We have seen an uptick in wedding and social functions across all hotels and anticipate this momentum to continue into 2022," said Nikhil Sharma, regional director, Eurasia, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts.

Piyush Kapoor, general manager at Radisson Blu Udaipur Palace Resort & Spa said the hotel is even hosting weddings from overseas guests from the UK, Dubai and Saudi Arabia this season and could cross the usual pre Covid threshold of hosting 65-70 weddings.

"We would have hosted about 10-12 weddings last year. At 245 keys, we have the largest inventory and have 8-10 venues. We are doing pretty well and are back to business. The pace and confidence levels are good. Last year, people were skeptical and there were many restrictions," he added.

Tarun Thakral, COO of Le Meridien said he is expecting an improvement in revenues as wedding guest limits have recently been extended to 200 in Delhi. “With the current vaccination rates, we don’t anticipate any major changes in guidelines,” he added.

Choudhary said the fear of psychosis seems to be disappearing and potential guests are even asking for wedding dates in February in the hope that the government will extend capacity even further by then.

Chopra from Accor said there is also more participation for different interventions during a wedding. "People are spending more on decorations now, which wasn't the case last year. Bollywood artists are also being roped in to perform at wedding events...Covid numbers have been consistently under control barring a few states and there is also a good recovery rate. Overall, the sentiment is positive and encouraging," he added.