Mumbai's Chalet hotels scouting for distressed assets as Covid curbs ease

'We've had a rough five quarters now since March of 2020,' says company's CEO Sanjay Sethi.

Mumbai-based Chalet Hotels Ltd., which owns, develops and manages high-end hotels in larger Indian cities, is scouting for distressed hospitality assets as the declining rate of Covid-19 infections enables some parts of the country to ease movement curbs.
 

“We certainly want to expand into the leisure side of the business. We don’t have a leisure asset,” Sanjay Sethi, Chalet Hotels’s chief executive officer said in a Bloomberg Television interview Tuesday. “Goa could potentially be a target market for us. Maybe something in Delhi and a couple of cities where we’re not present in right now.”

The hotel chain currently has properties across Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru and, like the rest of the hospitality sector, is gearing for a revival as India recovers from a deadly second virus wave in recent months that triggered local lockdowns and brought business as well as leisure travel to a halt.

“We’ve had a rough five quarters now since March of 2020,” said Sethi, adding that his company managed to bounce back quickly after the first wave last year. “The second wave hit us in March this year. It knocked the wind out of us for a couple of months. We seem to be recovering from that now.”

Chalet has multiple options to fund its growth if needed, according to Sethi. “Hopefully with the vaccination drive going strong now, we should be out of the woods in the next couple of quarters.