Worldhotels is looking at signing members in key cities in India. They expect to sign these hotels in another 12-15 months in Mumbai, Bengaluru, Goa and Kolkata.
Recently they have signed two hotels in The Golkonda Hotel, Hyderabad and The Galaxy Hotel, Delhi. The first Worldhotels branded hotel opened in Chandigarh – Worldhotels Turquoise Chandigarh – as a franchise unit. Under this new model, the company has signed 20 hotels globally and 12 of them are in the Asia Pacific region.
“It is also easy for our members to deal with just one company rather than many,” he added. Continuing with this philosophy one of the biggest investment Worldhotels has made is in developing a loyalty programme. “It is a state-of-the-art points based system which is similar to what some of the bigger hotel chains offer,” Jegge said. He added that this will lead to direct traffic to their websites as well as direct bookings for member hotels. Worldhotels were also the first to use Google Maps.
As for business Indian hotels did well for Worldhotels. Mumbai and Chennai fared better than Delhi-NCR. Of their business Jegge said that 60 per cent comes from 150,000 IATA registered agents. Around 15 per cent of the business globally comes through the Worldhotels and the individual hotel websites.