Budget hotels chain FabHotels has planned to enter more than 15 additional cities adding 1,000 hotels under the franchise model in its inventory by end of this fiscal, a top company official has said.
The company currently has over 400 hotels under its inventory in around 40 cities. "We continue to expand rapidly and are aiming to add 1,000 more properties across the emerging business cities in India by the end of FY19," Vaibhav Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, FabHotels stated.
The company plans to enter more than 15 additional cities this fiscal year. The locations include Kanpur, Ludhiana, Allahabad, Rajkot, Surat, Aurangabad, Ajmer, Ranchi, Raipur, and Jamshedpur, among others, he added.
Aggarwal said, "We have a very high demand from hotels to partner with us, reinstating the faith in our business model and the shift which the industry is experiencing at present." The company operates on the franchise model which is asset light, he added.
When asked how the company plans to fund its aggressive expansion plans, Aggarwal said, "In the last round we raised USD 25 million, and a majority of it is being spent towards expansion".
As the company follows an asset-light model, so on-boarding new hotels are at a very minimal cost, he added. "A majority of our spends are towards technology development, skilling and reskilling people in hospitality to ensure quality control and staff training," Aggarwal said.
On being asked about the main drivers of growth in the hospitality sector going forward, he said: "It is a sunrise moment for the hospitality sector. The budget segment (which is 90% of rooms in the hotel industry) is driving the industry forward and will see multiple brands emerge".
More and more hotels will align with these new-age brands and improve the consumer experience. Hotels which don't put consumer experience first won't survive, Aggarwal said.
Founded in 2014, FabHotels has raised USD 25 million in 2017 in a Series B investment round led by Goldman Sachs Investment Partners.
