Ladies and gentlemen, good day, and welcome to the Chalet Hotels Q2 FY 2024 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star then zero on a touchtone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sanjay Sethi, MD and CEO, Chalet Hotels Limited. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Thank you, Zico. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us for Chalet Hotels' earnings call for the quarter ended September 2023. Despite some global concerns, macroeconomic environment for India remains robust. Recent GDP forecast upgrades by rating agencies for India reiterate the same. Air traffic loads have been favorable, with very strong domestic travel and a robust pickup in international passenger loads, which are now touching pre-COVID levels. The number of direct flights between India and US are expected to increase to 82, which is a 20%... 28% higher than its previous peak. This will further enhance international inbound traffic. The global hospitality industry is also seeing persistence in RevPAR growth. India, too, continues to record strong ARRs and RevPAR growth in almost all major cities.
For Chalet, Q2 shaped up as expected with a healthy performance in the quarter. Our portfolio occupancy was resilient at 73% for the quarter, with an average room rate of INR 9,610. Average room rate grew by 21%. RevPAR for the quarter grew 25% year-on-year to INR 7,034. For the quarter, the hospitality division recorded revenue of INR 2.8 billion and EBITDA of INR 1.2 billion, marking a 27% growth in revenue and a 45% increase in EBITDA when compared to the corresponding quarter of FY 2023. Driven by strong average room rates, the flow-through in the portfolio has been very good, resulting in margin expansion as compared to Q2 of last year.
Our consolidated revenue reached INR 3.2 billion, with an EBITDA of INR 1.3 billion, reflecting a growth of 27% in revenue and 48% in EBITDA on the same quarter compared to previous year. For the first half of FY 2024, hospitality revenue was at INR 6 billion, with an EBITDA of INR 2.3 billion, which is an improvement of 32% over the same period last year. A reminder here that the second half of the year is seasonally better than the first half. Our employee-to-room ratios continue to reflect a high level of productivity at 0.97. This ratio includes both permanent and contract employees. It also includes employees for the newly added rooms at Novotel Pune, which were launched in October. Some key updates on our projects front.
Some key updates, is the one that you're talking about?
Yes, sir.
Okay. Some key updates on our project front. For our residential project, Raheja Vivarea at Koramangala, Bengaluru, we received for that project the OC for four towers. We had a total of 238 unsold residential units in that project. I'm happy to update that, as of October, sales have commenced, and we have sold five units till date. We also went live with the additional 88 rooms at Novotel Pune on fourth of October, taking the hotel inventory of that hotel to 311 rooms. The initial response on the new rooms is extremely positive. Excuse me. The renovation of the Dukes Retreat, Lonavala, has commenced. The work will be undertaken in two phases, with approximately half the existing rooms being closed for renovation. These rooms will be back live in Q1 FY25.
The remaining rooms will be taken up for renovation in phase two, with the total project completing in Q3 of FY 25. At that point of time, we expect to have a little under 150 rooms at that resort. Work for the new hotel at Delhi Airport commenced last month, and we expect to commission this landmark hotel for Chalet before the end of FY 26. For our Airoli hotel, we've been able to reengineer the project to make it more ROCE efficient. It is now proposed as a warm shell leased to us. Our CapEx will hence be back-ended and lower than envisaged earlier. The project is expected to commence mid-FY 25. Our first tenants have moved into the Cignus Bengaluru Tower 1 in August. Leasing activity has been a little bit mixed bag over there and in Powai.
Though deal closure has been slower than expected, the recent leasing trends in the key cities instill confidence in leasing trajectory going forward. The same is true for the Office Tower in Mumbai also. We have multiple ESG initiatives underway. Please do refer to the presentation for more details, and we have updated some of them, so please do go through that section. Our focus on employee well-being continues to be recognized, and for the fourth consecutive year, the company has been listed in India's best workplaces for women in 2023, mid-sized companies of top 50 by the Great Place to Work India. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited about what we've achieved in the past few quarters.
I'm even more excited about leveraging the current industry momentum and marrying it with the, with the strength of our balance sheet to take the next big leap at Chalet Hotels. Allow me to close this statement with my very best wishes for the festive season ahead for you and your dear ones. I will now hand over to Milind for him to take you through some of the finer details of the financials of the company.
Thank you, Sanjay. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We had a very good start in the first 2 quarters of this financial year. ADR for the quarter under discussion was at 9,610, and was up by 21% over the same period last year, and which is also higher than full year FY 2023 ADR of 9,169. First 2 quarters are seasonally slower. We are confident the rates, revenue, and margins will improve further in the second half of the current financial year. To give you some flavor, in FY 2023, hospitality business reported daily revenue of more than INR 50 million, that is INR 5 crores for 3 days, while in the current financial year, we have already had 5 days recording more than INR 50 million daily revenue over the last 2 months, indicative of stronger second half.
In the hospitality segment, revenue grew by 27% year-on-year to INR 2.8 billion for the quarter ended September 2023, led by strong RevPAR growth. We saw healthy growth across our portfolio and geographic locations, especially Bengaluru, which was the last market to recover. Reported hospitality EBITDA for the quarter was at INR 1,179 million, with EBITDA growth of 45% year-on-year. The margins for the quarter were at 41.4%, which is an expansion of 500 basis points over the last year, contributed by controlled variable cost, leading to higher throughput. Consolidated revenue for the quarter was at INR 3.2 billion, a growth of 27% year-on-year. Consolidated EBITDA was at INR 1.3 billion for quarter two FY 2024. EBITDA margins were at 40.7%, up six percentage points over the same period last year.
During the first 6 months, the company spent INR 2 billion on CapEx, out of which INR 1.5 billion was made out of internal accruals. Post this, the net debt of the company increased by INR 0.6 billion from March 2023. Out of the net debts of INR 25 billion, around half is allocable to capital work in progress and assets not yet operationalized, leaving the company at healthy leverage and return ratios on invested capital. The cost of finance as at September 2023 was at 8.67%. The company has CapEx plan of around INR 9 billion for next 18 months for the announced project, which will be largely funded through internal accruals. The details of the projects are included in our investor presentation. The company has available lines of credit and undrawn overdraft limits of INR 5.7 billion.
Lastly, a quick update on the residential project at Bengaluru. The construction work is in full swing. We have received occupation certificate for four wings out of nine buildings nearing completion. As mentioned by Sanjay, we have begun sales from October 2023 and have sold 5 flats comprising 25,135 sq ft, which is more than 21% of unsold area of the four wings for which OC have been received. There is no change in the total preferential subscription from promoters. Additionally, INR 1,000 million is taken as interest-free loan as of September 2023. With this, let me open the floor for questions and answers.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touchtone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question is from the line of Archana Gude from IDBI Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. I have three questions. Sir, starting with this, ICC World Cup matches, so how has been the response, for the hotels we are present in Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and some color on advanced booking and ADR there would be helpful.
So, Archana, thank you for your question. Number one, we'd not be speaking about advanced bookings for the coming months because we don't give forward-looking data.
Sure.
As far as ICC World Cup is concerned, we've you know get the bookings as they come in. There's no specific team or anything staying in our hotels.
Mm-hmm.
So whatever we get is, potentially visitors who are coming for the World Cup, events, matches, but, you know, there's no way to keep track of that. In any case, I don't expect that to be a very large number for any hotel in the city. To begin with, it's a one day or a one and a half day sort of a stay.
Mm-hmm.
Number two, most of the visitors for the matches are locals of that city. And number three, unless you have teams staying with you, we don't have any block booking coming in at one shot.
Right, sir. So my second question is, to our notes account, point number six. So can you help me understand the implications of the Supreme Court judgment and its impact on the operations of Four Points by Sheraton, Mumbai?
Archana, Milind this side. See, we don't expect unfavorable judgment coming in, and we have given notes in our financial statement. Our WDV, our project is around INR 43 crore. That's assets we are putting at risk if there is unfavorable judgment.
Right. Okay. So lastly, Sanjay, you spoke about this Cignus Whitefield and Powai. You know, the demand has been not as what we expected. So is that, like, you know, how we should relate that? Is that there is higher supply or kind of the demand is subdued, and we wait for further clarity about the, you know, overall the tenant occupying the space and the rates, everything?
So Archana, we've seen some traction, in fact, fairly decent traction build up on the Bengaluru one. And we do expect at least the new tower that we built to be completely leased out over the next few months. We are not so concerned about that. There's a smaller building of 300,000-odd sq ft, which is old Inorbit Mall. We haven't seen any LOI or closure on that one. However, we do have a few people who want to take up the whole space at one shot. So while I don't want to you know fall into the trap of committing to closing that out in the near future, let's just wait and watch. I'm pretty confident that we'll be good in Bengaluru.
But why we have taken a conscious call not to rush the leasing, especially if the rates that we've targeted are not being met. And it's a question of closing that first anchor tenant. As soon as we do that, we are pretty sure that others will follow. There were two improvement projects that were connected with this particular leasing activity. One was beautification of the road leading up from L&T Junction to our hotel, or the plot where the office is. And the second was the road widening. Both have been approved by the BMC. Work has started on the beautification of the road, on the main road and then leading up to our gate. On the expansion side, it is BMC that has to execute it.
We'll wait for their start of execution. Once that happens, we will see the access to the road to the site improve significantly. The other thing that's happening is a significant amount of metro work happening around the approach for this particular site. That's also expected to conclude at least the physical work in the near future. And whenever that sort of concludes and the metro line opens, the accessibility improves significantly also. But more importantly, we're pretty confident that in the next few weeks we will see some signings happening in Powai, too.
Right, sir. That was helpful. Thank you so much, and the best wishes for the festive season ahead. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Karan Khanna from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks for the opportunity and, congratulations on another resilient quarter. So Sanjay, my first question, you know, in the absence of a meaningful recovery in, on the FTA front, how confident are you about, say, a double-digit growth in the room rates over the next couple of years? Or to put it another way, what, according to you, will trigger a faster recovery in the FTA growth? And, accordingly, because of that, how much do you think could that contribute to the room rate growth in addition to the double digit that you've been talking about?
Hi, Karan, I continue to have a view that we will grow at least a double-digit rate growth for the next couple of years. We are seeing more than that pan out already in the subsequent quarters after I spoke about it a couple of quarters back. We see no reason why that view will change in any way. In terms of FTAs, inbound tourist arrivals, we do expect that starting post-Diwali season, post-Diwali, we'll see a significant uptick on the foreign tourist arrivals. As I mentioned earlier, the Air India connectivity to West and East Coast of U.S. from Bangalore and Mumbai, both these destinations is gonna help significantly. Direct connectivity to other international destinations from Hyderabad is already helping Hyderabad city.
Between these three cities, we expect foreign tourist arrivals to grow in the second half of this year.
Sure. And my second question, Sanjay, is on Novotel, Pune, with the, you know, launch of 88 room-- addition of 88 rooms at Novotel, what sort of ARRs are you looking at for this inventory? Because I believe this is more premium. And second, how, by when do you expect the hotel occupancy to ramp up for this inventory?
So we're already seeing occupancy ramp up happening on that hotel, in Novotel, and after we open those new rooms, there's a clear interest, a clear sort of positive feedback that we're getting on those new rooms. I hope you had a chance to look at the presentation. You will see a picture of that Novotel room. It's very attractive, very contemporary, very modern. And so we are expecting occupancy in that hotel to, in spite of 40% inventory addition, to continue to be in the high 60s to 70% the next few weeks, and then it'll start climbing up from there.
Sure. And lastly, could you elaborate more on the key terms and conditions relating to the leasing of hotel structure from Mindspace REIT, and for the development of the Aerocity hotel, and what will be the revenue share or the lease payments, how will that be structured with the REIT?
So I will not share the details as yet. Mindspace is in the process, still due to have its board meeting. We'll let them, sort of, get that out of the way and get the approval so that then we will share the details. But, as an overall overview, from the numbers that both teams seem to have come to agree on, the returns look extremely healthy for both sides. It becomes a win-win situation. From our perspective, we get, because the office floors coming on the lower floors, 12 floors of office, in addition to the 6 parking floors, so typically the hotel will actually start from the 19th floor. That's your primary public area for the start of the hotel.
And then we'll have about 11 floors of rooms above that. So the views are gonna be stunning. The views are actually improving by putting the going down the structure. The returns get more efficient for both parties. And, from our perspective, because the CapEx is back-ended, as it'll be a warm shell lease, we expect this to be value creative to—for us. Milind, would you like to add anything?
Current, Milind, yeah. See, this is group company transactions, and the leasing rates are determined at arm's length, so and are benchmarked against prevailing lease rentals in that micro market.
Sure. Thanks, Sanjay and Milind, and best wishes for the best of season.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Vikas Ahuja from Antique Stock Broking Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, hi. Good evening to the management, and congratulations on good execution. I mean, one question I have is regarding, if I heard you clearly, I mean, correctly, you said that the World Cup impact on revenues is, you know, a few here and there, but it's not very meaningful what initially, you know, I think many of the, especially the media and all, were speculating that it's going to bring a meaningful revenue. But it's more like because we didn't have any contract with any of the teams, so it's very marginal on that front. I mean, is that the right statement?
So, Vikas, look at it like this: I think we've maintained right from the beginning that, you know, one-off events never have any major impact on the overall business that we have. I continue to maintain that, and as far as we are concerned, we've purposely stayed away from any contractual business in the World Cup with the teams because it comes at a low rate. And because the city tends to get maybe sold out or near sold out on account of various events that happen in the city, the other hotels anyway get the benefit of displaced business, which typically will come to us if we stay away from the groups at higher price. And I think that's sort of helping our average room rates.
Again, even if you look at my past statements, I've said one-off events are not what Chalet's strategy banks on. We look at large impact, you know, events that happen, which then gives spin-off business for the subsequent months. Even in G20, I said G20, whatever benefit we're getting is great, but going forward, I see a longer-term impact of G20 because that will open up new business relationships with various other countries or new business industries in those countries, and I see long-term benefit coming out of that for the coming years. So I continue to maintain that, you know, one-off events is not something that excites us. We will do what the right is in, right thing is.
As far as revenue management is concerned for the hotel, we focus more on more steady, you know, broad-based business.
Sure, that's helpful. And, my second question is: if I look at the hospitality revenue breakup, the contribution of food and beverages, it continues to go down, even if I compare Q-on-Q on year-on-year basis. Can you explain that? I mean, is it, you know, addition because of addition of something or,
Sure.
Why, why?
Yes, that's how you would see it there, but I think what's missing is that the room rates have grown so phenomenally that the share of F&B to rooms seems to be lower. But really, and whilst we think that some of the hotels could have done slightly better on F&B, especially on the banquet side, we think it's just the real strong push on the room revenue that is looking F&B is underplayed, which may not be the case actually. We see a strong H2 coming ahead of us with the weddings.
Going forward, the other small elements that one of my colleagues has highlighted is that, you know, the Hyderabad second hotel that we've opened will always have a slightly lower F&B contribution because that's a sort of a, as you know, with a single client, we booked it for three years. But then the RevPAR was just so high that F&B in comparison will always look lower.
Sure. And my final question is regarding the Delhi property. So you have said that those 390 keys are going to come in next by 2026. So I think largely it's going to be the end of the year, right? And is there a possibility maybe give some, you know, rough estimates around what internally the RevPAR or pricing or occupancy we are working with? That's my last question. Thanks a lot.
Because I'm afraid I won't be able to give you specific numbers on that, because as I said, we don't give out advanced numbers. But expect the occupancies to be extremely high and rates to be as per competing market rates in the micro market available city. So expect those rates for the upper upscale segment, and expect higher occupancies actually in this particular hotel because of its specific location next to the Terminal three.
But we are confident this 390 rooms will come by FY 2026 and will not go to FY 20-
As of now, I have no reasons to believe it is not gonna come by end of FY 2026. The work has started, and, when we look at the plan versus execution, we are going on track.
All right, sir. Thanks a lot. Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, before we take the next question, a reminder to all participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from the line of Jinesh Joshi from Prabhudas Lilladher Private Limited. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. Sir, I have a question on our Bangalore asset. This 0.66 million sq ft of area that is under the process of being leased out. So can you share how much have you leased out so far, and what is the incremental benefit that has come through?
So, Jinesh, thank you for the question. We've leased out 200,000 sq ft, and we've got a couple of closing conversations happening on others.
Sure. And secondly, with respect to our debt, I think in the past calls, we had highlighted that some portion of our debt will be converted into a lease rental discounting. And if I look at our interest expense this time around, and I compare that with what it was in March, we have seen some reduction come through. So, has any of our debt got converted into LRD?
Jinesh, million, yes. So, LRD conversion of loans into LRD will be continuous process. I mean, as leasing traction improves, we'll convert more and more loans into LRD. The small increase in the, in our average cost of finance is on account of MCLR, is set by three or four lenders, and we expect it would normalize in one or two months, so.
So basically, LRD benefit is yet to come through?
Is yet to come. Yeah, you're right. Is yet to come.
Sure. One last question from my side. I think this got addressed earlier, but I mean, it was not pretty clear in terms of understanding. So this new arrangement that has come up with respect to the development of hotel in Airoli, basically, how will this change the P&L dynamic for us? And will it also entail any reduction in CapEx outflow? Because now instead of purchasing the land, I think we are going out for a lease option. So if you can just throw some light on how the P&L will look different for this hotel because of this new arrangement.
Yeah, Jinesh, Sanjay here. So quickly, 2 things will change on the upfront capital, capital cost or the cost that we incur in right at the beginning. One is that acquisition cost of the land will be 0, it will not be there. And number 2, because it's a warm shell lease, the warm shell will now be built by the landlord, which in this case is the Mindspace Business Park, and therefore we expect your denominator in a ROCE to go down significantly. We continue to have a positive outlook on the market in that area, which will continue to see like good occupancies and good average room rates. So we expect the ROCEs to be very sound on this particular asset. So 2 takeaways:
... CapEx costs significantly lower, ROC is improving.
Dinesh, from P&L perspective, few more impacts, I mean, my CapEx is going down, so my depreciation will be lower. In this format, my interest on borrowed capital will be lower, so it will be more, EPS accretive.
Got that. One small clarification. In the press release, we have stated that the investment required for this hotel will now be INR 160 crore. So what, what's the original CapEx that we were planning to incur?
I think it was at INR 290 crore. I mean, don't hold me to the number, but around that range. But earlier it was a 260-room project. It is now 280 or 270, 280-odd rooms. The costs, as you saw, has come down from 280, where we were 290 earlier, to now the number that you have on the sheet in front of you.
Thank you so much, sir, and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from the line of Santosh Sinha from Emkay Global. Please go ahead.
Hi. So, regarding, my question is regarding occupancy. If I look at the other segment except, excluding, Mumbai, occupancy has increased in this quarter versus last quarter. So what, what has driven this, increase in, sudden increase in occupancy? And my second question is regarding the international, share of international versus, Q1. What I can see is that there is a decline, quarter-over-quarter, in share of international, tourists or, guests as such. So what has driven this, decline actually in Q2?
So, two answers to this. First one, that occupancy has improved because we also opened a second hotel in the month of June at Hyderabad, where the occupancy is 100%. So it will take the blended occupancy up slightly. On your second question about international, quarter two is traditionally the lowest quarter in terms of international travel into India. So this is not unusual. It is following the normal cycles, quarterly cycles of, mix of Indian and international, travel.
Thank you. Thanks for taking the question.
I think the other thing, you know, Santhosh, just to complete that answer, is that we also let go of a few crews which are low-paying business at JW Sahar. In fact, we let go of a significant amount of rooms over there in favor of high, higher paying guests. So therefore, there was some drop, marginal drop in the foreign occupancy at that hotel also. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. Our next question is from Himanshu Shah from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Thanks, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So, in Mumbai market, micro market, a lot of the supply is coming up, which is expected in this calendar year as well as in the next calendar year. And Mumbai is one of our key market with a significant revenue contribution. So what's giving us confidence of double-digit ARR growth in this backdrop of increased room supply?
So, Himanshu, I don't think too much of supply is coming in. If you really look at Mumbai, for the last six-seven years, there's no new supply that's coming in at all. Whatever new that's coming in, and I'll count three hotels on that front. One is the Fairmont that's being developed at the airport, which will be in direct competition with us. That's going to come up with the, as per the latest now, numbers that I hear, are around 500 rooms, as against 700 for any such earlier. That will, to the best of my knowledge, is gonna open in the last quarter of next year. That's the assessment that we have. But that's 500 rooms coming on a base of, you know, 6,000-8,000 rooms.
So it's not a major jump in the supply. The second hotel that's going to open is the Ritz-Carlton in Worli, which again, is a luxury hotel. Not a very large hotel, but it's in Worli, which is not the micro market that we get our business from. The third hotel, which has opened recently, was the Taj at Vikhroli, which is, I'm told, a very nice hotel. I haven't seen it yet. But then again, not humongous supply, so I don't see that as troubling, given the size of the market is so deep and so big. That will get some business from the same micro markets that we get business for Four Points by Sheraton Vashi and for the Westin Powai. So we will get some new business going there.
But I believe the demand is growing at a far higher pace than the supply coming in. So we believe that the rates will continue to grow in double digits, at least for the next two years.
Okay, sir. So even Aurika is also coming up, which is also a big hotel, 670 rooms. That is also in our market, be a notch below us, but shouldn't that also have an impact?
From a category perspective, it doesn't come in the same category as our JW Sahar. That's where the location is. It's in the airport district. And the JW is not one notch above, it is several notches above. I've gone and seen the hotel, very fine hotel, but it will remain at the higher end of probably that company's portfolio. But from our perspective, the JW Marriott is positioned very, very differently than Marriott. And if they do well, and I'm sure they will do well with high occupancies and high rates, it will only help us push our rates further up.
Right, sir. Congratulations and all the best, and very happy festive season.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Aishwarya Agarwal from Nippon. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you very much for the opportunity. So, Sanjay, sir, I heard you was talking about double-digit growth in ARR, and you expect this trend to continue for two years. So, so that's a very good thing to happen. Having said that, I understand that the current rates are high and the supply side not much of response because probably the the IRR on the new hotels are still not that healthy, that people aren't used to invest. Barring these two things, if I want to have a view that this ARR growth will continue in the double digit for a couple of years, I don't get more insight or more colors into it. So the conviction level on that kind of growth remains a bit low.
So if you can share some data points which probably can help us to improve our conviction and then maybe to look at what are the key things to look for to have that kind of confidence the way you have?
Thank you, Aishwarya. Look, I think the trajectory of growth for India is a trend line that you should follow. It is driven by the gap in the demand and supply side of the business. On the supply side, I'm gonna address that first. I agree that, you know, you yourself mentioned there may not be too many investors on account of IRRs coming out of an industry like this, unless you are sitting on land which exists with you, or you have opportunities to partner with someone who can bring in land at a low cost for you. That's one. But besides that, I think the key thing, key item that's giving me a lot more confidence is because the supply takes time to come.
See, we have visibility on all the announced supply across the country, right? And the supply doesn't come overnight. We're in a brick-and-mortar business. Someone has to build those hotels. The typical lead time for building a hotel from announcement could range from three years to seven-eight years. And that's why my confidence for the next couple of years, for sure, and I think that we've got at least a very strong positive sort of run for at least four years, which is the minimum time new supply, which is going to be announced sometime in the future, will come into play. So that's my thesis on the supply.
And if you really break down the supply that's coming in into various buckets of tier one cities, tier two and tier three cities, and then break it up into leisure and non-leisure locations, you'll realize the barriers to entry in tier one cities are actually affecting supply growth in tier one quite dramatically. And if you were to look at the last five-six years and the future five-six years, you will find that the CAGR on supply in tier one cities is far lower than what we're projecting at the kind, at a countrywide level also. I will see, and we do expect leisure to grow a little more aggressively than business hotels, especially in tier one. So that's one, the supply side.
Coming to the demand side, look, the Indian business traveler is on the move in a very, very strong way. Unlike early comments by a lot of experts and consultants, that this could be pent-up demand, pent-up demand doesn't last for four quarters, and therefore, we don't believe this is pent-up demand. This is actually institutionalized demand growth that's happening, and it will continue to grow at a reasonable pace. The foreign business travel is still not back at its peak. It will come back once the air connectivity and the seat availability of international connections improves, and it will improve, because international carriers are very keen to come to India, seeing the growth in India. Everyone wants a pie from India, and they will come back and get their flights in.
Today, there are two couple of hindrances. One, the Russia, Ukraine war, has taken longer than we all expected it will take, and therefore, the direct route over the North Pole is not available for airlines. At some point in time, they'll have to say, "Listen, we don't want to miss the India story, and therefore, we will take a slightly longer route, even if it means taking the flight seats, you know, making them a little more expensive." So that's the demand side. I see domestic demand and international demand growing. The other big-ticket item that we expect to help us is the MICE and the wedding business. And we're now hitting the season where MICE and wedding will start taking shape for quarter three and quarter four for all of us. And you'll be...
I'm pretty, pretty confident that you'll be surprised with the, with the quantum of MICE and weddings that we're gonna see across India, going forward. So on all segments, we see significant growth happening.
Sure, sir. That's very detailed answer, sir. But in this also, I have some two more questions. One is, the supply side, what you said is I completely agree, because those things are very much measurable, and we know what is happening there. But on the demand side, there is a price elasticity, and I don't know how much it will work against us or in going forward as the rates goes up. But we are talking about couple of years of the double-digit growth. And on the highways, if we keep on adding double-digit growth, the base, it becomes very large. And with that into context,
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead, sir.
Aishwarya, Aishwarya, I mean, you please look at what rates we're talking about, right? I'm not here referring to the expensive INR 25,000, INR 30,000 rupee rates that you're seeing in, in Goas and Jaipurs or the Shimlas of the world for a limited time of the year. I'm talking about regular average room rate in the cities that we operate in, or business cities, which we don't operate in. There, even if you look at Mumbai today, what's the Mumbai average room rate for five-star Le Méridien hotel? $130, $140? By which global standards is $130, $140 high? It's not, and therefore, the pricing elasticity that you're speaking about has a lot more headroom for, from here onwards to where we think it can potentially go.
If you're gonna be adding another $15 a year on our room rates, on our average room rates, I don't think it's gonna be too much for from a price elasticity perspective. I do expect global travelers who are paying upwards of $250 a night in other gateway cities will continue to travel, even if our price is $200. And $200 is still roughly around 55% from where we are today.
Yeah, sure. Sure. Sure, I mean, that's a, that's a valid point. The second question I have, sir, in this context, that how are we gauging the MICE activity and the marriage versus previous year? Do we see higher intensity of these two things in this year versus previous year?
Continues to be strong across India, and not just our portfolio. We see a strong MICE and wedding segment, and growing year- on- year. We also expect a lot of industry events to happen over the next six months. You've already seen government coming in very aggressively and strongly on promoting tourism, and MICE tourism is one of the key segments they're trying to promote. And also the infrastructure development that's happening across the cities is going to support MICE growth extensively for us.
Yeah.
I want to give two examples here. One, look at what happened to MICE business in India when the convention center opened in BKC. It turned around for those six months in a year, the MICE intensity in the city. With Delhi now getting two convention centers opened up now in the recent weeks only, we see that activity to pick up immensely in that city. We are seeing similar opportunities coming up as convention centers in Jaipur, Bengaluru, and in Hyderabad. So we see all this pushing MICE business, you know, quite aggressively. And add to that, the air connectivity that is improving across the country. It is clearly a very positive outlook for MICE.
Sure. Sure, and one more last question. In context of Indian corporates, one is the foreign corporates traveling India, and they see the numbers in the dollar, dollars per day. Whereas if you talk about the Indian corporates who look at the numbers in INR, and they are a bit more cost-conscious also. So I know that Chalet has large part of revenue coming from the foreign travelers, but when it comes to Indian corporate and their travel expenses, and there if I applied a price elasticity, so I guess your guess will be better than my guess. So if you guide on that.
I think all Indian corporates are. I, you know, it's important to sort of explain this. When I say Indian corporates or when you say Indian corporates and foreign corporates, it's not just the foreign passport holders, right? When you talk about foreign corporates, it includes the Indians, Indian passport holders who live in India but work with MNCs, having similar global budgets. So don't look at 38% as the only contribution coming from global contracts, MNCs. It's closer to about 75 odd percent of the total business comes from global agencies, including the ones who live in India, and their budgets for travel are northwards of $250.
The balance Indian corporates, because, given that they realized that there is gonna be a crunch on the rooms availability, have in the last one year increased their travel budget significantly. We believe they'll continue to do so for the next couple of years.
Sure, sir. These are very helpful, and thank you very much for the detailed answer.
Thank you, Aishwarya.
Thank you. A reminder to all participants, you may press star and one to ask a question. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question of our question and answer session. As there are no further questions, I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Sanjay Sethi for closing comments.
Thank you again, and, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the time that you spent with us. So in conclusion, I'd like to say that we are again extremely excited about the future for the hotel industry going forward, and Chalet is looking forward to work with the industry in the next big steps for us. Thank you.
Thank you. On behalf of Chalet Hotels, that concludes this conference. Thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.