Newly listed Brigade Hotel Ventures, the hospitality arm of Bengaluru-based real estate major Brigade Enterprises Ltd is positioning itself for strong and steady growth over the next few years.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Nirupa Shankar, Managing Director of Brigade Hotel Ventures, said that the company has an aggressive expansion pipeline, with five hotels already under development and more in the works.
The company is also shifting its portfolio mix toward high-end, five-star deluxe properties like Grand Hyatt (Chennai), Ritz-Carlton (Kerala), and Intercontinental (Hyderabad), which is expected to significantly boost ARR over the next five years.
While its base remains in South India, Brigade is gradually expanding into new geographies and exploring both leisure and religious tourism destinations. The firm is also scouting for opportunistic acquisitions using funds from its IPO proceeds, making it clear that its growth strategy is both long-term and diversified.
The company is optimistic about maintaining last year’s momentum in revenue and EBITDA, with 15–17% growth likely to continue in FY26.
These are edited excerpts of the interview.
Q: What is the growth outlook for the company in FY26 and FY27, and what kind of margins can we expect during this period?
A: In terms of our growth, what we have been saying is that last year, of course, now that we listed number of forward looking statements have to be limited. Last year we saw pretty good growth in terms of revenue and EBITDA. We saw a 16% to 17% growth in terms of topline and maybe another 15% in terms of EBITDA.
In the coming year, we feel that they should this year should not be any different. We feel very positive, I understand that the market is slightly volatile at the moment, and I feel that volatility is the nature of the game, and it is up to companies like us to keep our head down, work hard and stand the course and continue to deliver on good numbers.
Q: Given the pipeline that you have five new hotels that are coming in, your 1,000 keys coming in by FY28 to FY30, what is the peak revenue now that one could see coming in for the company? Overall in terms of the business wise FY25 ₹
468 crores was your revenue? Next three-four years, what would we expect?
A: The next three, four years, we will have three hotels coming in byFY28, we will have another three coming in and FY29 and the business development doesn’t stop just there. Every year we are doing business development continuously. In fact, apart from the five hotels where we have tied up the land and the brand, there are three more hotels where we have tied up the brand and the land, and that will be announced shortly.
In terms of the IPO proceeds, we have kept aside some funds to buy an unidentified asset, so it’s more of an opportunistic buy. There will be growth that we see over the next three years. Of course, with hotels, as you know, it does take time to develop, Greenfield assets can take once you finalise the design and once you finalise the land and get the approvals, they do take at least two and a half three years by the time they can open to the public. It is a long-term game when it comes to hospitality, peak revenues, like I said, by the time these hotels come up and start to stabilise, could take five years from now. Howevr, our existing portfolio will continue to see growth, and like I said, we are looking for opportunistic buys in the market as well to spur on our growth.
Q: Let us focus on geographical experience, as of now, you have a stronghold in South India. How do you see geographic breakup move from here on.
A: See our stronghold, even from the parent company, is the Southern markets. We like the markets of Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad. Our hotels are currently in five cities. We will be expanding to at least seven cities where we have current visibility and where we have acquired land. In the sense, expand from five to seven. Apart from that, one of the main reasons we did this IPO and sort of created our own entity for the hospitality vertical was so that we could look at markets where the parent entity doesn’t always already exist.
It could be some leisure destinations, some of the leisure destinations we are looking at could be Goa or interesting leisure destinations in the southern markets within driving distance of the major tier one cities could be religious destinations, where we can expect religious tourism to come through. We are evaluating markets apart from Southern. In India as well. But of course, a lot of the expansion will be in areas where we have a stronghold and where we understand the micro market specifically.
The portfolio will move from mostly business driven hotels to a very healthy mix of business and leisure. The other change that you can expect to see is moving more towards Five-star Deluxe hotels. We have signed up the Grand Hyatt in Chennai. It is a beachfront resort. We have signed up a Ritz-Carlton in Vaikom, Kerala, it’s an island beachfront resort. We have also signed up the Intercontinental Hotel in Hyderabad so these are all Five-star Deluxe properties. This will help increase the average room rate (ARR) of the portfolio when they come up and this will move us into more of Five-star luxury Deluxe category portfolio,
Q: Just a quick one in terms of ARR, what would your guidance be for the ARR going forward?
A: ARR for the existing portfolio is very different. But maybe, when we look at the ARR for the existing portfolio, because these are mostly stabilised hotels, then typically you don’t want to take a very high estimate. So our estimates are very conservative for the existing portfolio, could be in 9 to 10%.
But when you look at the portfolio overall and where we expect the portfolio to be four to five years when the new hotels come up, will be a significant increase. It could even mean a doubling up of the ARR based on how these hotels open and what the market conditions are at that point in time. Like I said, we are moving to lot more luxury hotels, and we do expect a significant increase in the ARR.
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