Note: This is a preliminary transcript and may contain inaccuracies. It will be updated with a final, fully-reviewed version soon.
Indian Hotels Company Ltd (NSE: INDHOTEL) Q4 2026 Earnings Call dated May. 11, 2026
Corporate Participants:
Puneet Chhatwal — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Ankur Dalwani — Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President
Analysts:
Sumit Sinha — Analyst
Unidentified Participant
Shaleen Kumar — Analyst
Achal Kumar — Analyst
Prateek Kumar — Analyst
Karan Khanna — Analyst
Presentation:
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to The Indian Hotels Co. Ltd. Earnings conference call for the quarter and fiscal year ended 31st March 2026. On the call we have with us Mr. Puneet Chatwal, Managing Director and CEO IHCL and Mr. Ankur Dalwani, EVP and CFO IHCL. 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 this conference call, please signal an operator by pressing Star and then zero on your touchtone phone.
Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Puneet Chetwal. Thank you. And over to you, Mr. Chetwal.
Puneet Chhatwal — Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer
Good evening everyone and thank you for joining our conference call for Q4 and FY 2526. We are pleased to inform you that we have continued our record performance for the 16th consecutive quarter, driven by sustained strength in our core business while building scale with profitability. Let me start with why we think this was an important year the FY26. We also call it the Year of Strengthening the Foundation. It was an important milestone year for IHCL where we built the foundation for the next phase of growth, strengthening our brandscape, enhancing resilience, scaling our platforms and investing in capabilities that will make IHCL future ready.
Despite a year marked by multiple macroeconomic headwinds like geopolitical conflicts and weather related disruptions, IHCL continued to deliver strong performance with consistency and discipline. This reflects the structural strength of our business model and the agility of our teams across markets. Over the last year we have focused on building three defining attributes of the IHCL ecosystem. Number one, the word which I’ve just used often at the beginning of my speech, that is Resilience through a diversified portfolio across segments, markets and business models, allowing us to deliver consistently across cycles.
I call it also resilience by brand, by contract type and by geography. Number two is scale through accelerated portfolio expansion, strategic acquisitions and strengthening. Most important, strengthening our management led growth platform or capital light growth. Number three, Future readiness by investing in new brands, digital capabilities, refreshed assets and emerging hospitality formats that position us for long term relevance. Together these three pillars have laid a strong and enduring foundation, one that now allows us to transition confidently into our next phase of sustainable growth at scale.
Now we should move to what built this foundation. Our business today is structurally more diversified with leadership positions across both luxury and mid scale segments. Our capital light strategy continues to be a defining competitive advantage with 68% of our operating portfolio and 93% of our pipeline under managed or asset light formats. This enables disciplined expansion with superior returns even as we invested meaningfully for future growth. We delivered EBITDA margin of 35% reflecting operating discipline and structural efficiency.
Our balance sheet remains exceptionally strong with gross liquidity of over 4300 crores, giving us significant flexibility to pursue both organic and suitable inorganic growth opportunities. Over the last three years we have invested over 2,500 crores in capital expenditure to strengthen our iconic assets and enhance strategic capabilities. As we have mentioned over the last several years, asset management was, is and remains a key focus area for the asset heavy part of our portfolio. Even going forward, we will continue to invest 1000 to 1200 crores annually to strengthen our existing competitive advantages and at the same time build new ones.
Alongside this, we deployed over 500 crores across four strategic acquisitions, expanding our presence into high growth adjacencies and strengthening future revenue streams. Importantly, our newer and emerging brands are now reaching meaningful scale and are well positioned to increase their contribution to enterprise revenues from the current 10%. Taken together, these actions have created a business that is not only resilient in the present, but increasingly scalable and future ready for the opportunities ahead.
What are the future ready building blocks in place? That’s my point Number three Before we move into detailed performance review, it is important to highlight the structural building blocks that position IHCL for sustainable long long term growth. Over the last few years we have consciously built a diversified and resilient ecosystem, one that combines scale, brand strength, operational excellence and institutional capability. Let me start with diversified brandscape. Today IHCL has one of the most comprehensive hospitality brand portfolios in the country spanning luxury, upper, upscale, upscale, mid scale and emerging lifestyle segments.
This multi brand architecture allows us to participate across consumer segments, travel locations and price points. Number two portfolio and pipeline with over 630 hotels, 64,000 plus keys in the portfolio, we continue to scale with discipline through a strong mix of managed, leased and owned assets creating long term visibility with capital efficiency. Along with our 375/ama Villa Villa, which is our homestay brand, our portfolio has now crossed the milestone of 1000 units when combined with 630 plus hotels portfolio.
As mentioned earlier, our pipeline remains strong at 31,000 plus keys and continues to be largely capital light. Number three our people and Our Culture Hospitality at its core remains a people led business. Our greatest strength lies in our 50,000 plus associates who bring excellence to life every day through trust, awareness and joy. Taj or what we proudly call Tajness, consistently delivering exceptional experiences across brands and markets. The trust, awareness and joy is a common culture and core values that we have put to all brands and we don’t use anywhere by Taj or a bit of Taj as a prefix or suffix in any of the brands because we do believe core values is what drives your business, which drives your resilience and which drives profitability.
Number four Owners and Partners over the years we have built deep and trusted relationships with owners and stakeholders across the ecosystem. Our ability to create win win value propositions through scalable operating models continues to drive strong signing momentum and long term partnerships. We have now 40 plus owners who have trusted us with more than one asset in our 630 hotel portfolio. Number five customer and loyalty. We continue to strengthen guest engagement through our expanding loyalty ecosystem, digital platforms and partnerships enabling deeper customer connect, higher repeat business and improved customer value proposition.
Finally, Enterprise Resilience. We have significantly strengthened institutional capabilities across governance, digital infrastructure, risk management and operational processes creating a more agile, resilient and future ready organization. Collectively, these building blocks provide the foundation for sustained growth, stronger margins and long term value creation. Now is the time to come to Q4 performance highlights let me now begin with Q4 performance highlights. On a consolidated basis, revenue for Q4 2526 grew 14% year on year to 2,845 crores.
EBITDA grew 15% year on year to rupees 1052 crore yielding EBITDA margin of 37%. Our consolidated PAT before exceptional items grew 14% year on year to rupees 600 crores. Our stand alone performance in Q4 was also the best ever with industry leading 12% growth in RevPAR. This resulted in overall revenue growing to 1,721 crores and an EBITDA margin expansion by 160 basis points to 49.5%. Standalone PAT before exceptional items grew 15% to 569 crores taking PAT margin to 33.1%. Other parts of our performance highlights for FY26 is that on a consolidated basis revenue for 2526 grew 16% year on year to rupees 9,971 crores.
EBITDA grew 16% year on year to 3477 crores yielding EBITDA margin of 34.9%. For the first time ever we crossed milestone of 2000 plus crore in profit after tax on a standalone basis revenue grew 10% year on year to 5,640 crores. EBITDA grew 13% year on year to 2,543 crores yielding EBITDA margin of 45.1% and expansion of 120 basis points year on year. Standalone PAT grew 14% to 1,632 crores taking PAT margin to 29%. What is important is to step back and reflect on our growth journey. Over the past four years we have delivered a double digit CAGR across revenue, EBITDA and PAT on both a consolidated and standalone basis.
This underscores the consistency, quality and the structural strength of our business model. Let me move on to the new businesses which are at an inflection point. Our new Businesses vertical comprising Ginger, Cumin, Ama, Stays and Trail and Tree of Life delivered 25% growth in FY26. This resulted in a consolidated revenue of 753 crores. Over the past four years the new Businesses vertical has delivered a CAGR of 31% growth reflecting the strong momentum and successful scaling of our high growth brands.
The flagship Ginger hotel at Mumbai Airport crossed the milestone of 100 plus crore in revenue for the first time while delivering an industry leading EBITDA margin of 56%. Cumin expanded its footprint to 100 plus outlets while AMA crossed the milestone of 375 bungalows in its portfolio with 85 villas signed during the year. Cumin also on a GMV has crossed almost 200 crores last year. We have never left our focus on asset management and investment. On the contrary, we remain committed to investing in our assets and building our capabilities for the future, thus strengthening our competitive advantages.
IHCL in FY2526 spent over 1000 crores towards capex out of which around 650 crores was used for renovations, routine maintenance and digital initiatives while the rest half was used towards greenfield projects coming on to dividend payout. Our strong and consistent financial performance has enabled us to continue enhancing shareholder returns while maintaining a disciplined approach to capital allocation. Reflective of this sustained performance, the Board has proposed a dividend equivalent to 25% of consolidated PAT amounting to rupees 3.25 per equity share subject to shareholders approval.
This includes a one time special dividend of Rs. 0.50 per share to commemorate IHCL’s landmark 125th AGM as well as the exceptional gains realized during the year. The proposed dividend of rupees 3.25 per share represents an increase of approximately 44% over the dividend of rupees 2.25 per share declared in FY2425. More importantly, over the last four years IHCL has delivered a dividend CAGR of 48% reflecting both the strength of our cash generation capabilities and our commitment to delivering long term value to shareholders.
As we move now to FY27, we do so with immense confidence and strong momentum. The foundations built over the past few years position IHCL well for the next phase of accelerated growth. In conclusion, in FY27 we expect 60 plus hotel openings across brands and geographies. Number two, our recent acquisitions are expected to contribute over 250 crores in incremental revenue. Number three, Ginger and the Mid scale platform continue to strengthen our leadership position in a structurally underpenetrated segment.
As I mentioned on a few occasions, we expect the Gingerbrand itself to have a total portfolio of 250 hotels either under development or in operation at the end of FY27. Number four, renovated inventory across key assets is expected to create further upside through improved pricing, power and guest experience. Finally, industry fundamentals also remain favorable supported by resilient domestic demand and limited incremental supply across key markets. On the outlook, as we look ahead to FY27 and beyond, we remain confident of delivering double digit revenue growth with sustained margins, strong cash generation and improved quality of earnings.
Our ambition is not only to grow larger but to build one of the most admired and future ready hospitality ecosystems around the globe. With strong foundations in place, disciplined execution and a clear strategic direction, IHCL is well positioned to continue creating long term value for all stakeholders. Thank you very much for listening and we will now be happy to take your questions.
Operator
Thank you very much. We will now begin with the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press STAR and then one on their touchstone phone. 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. Your first question comes from the line of Sumant Kumar from Motila Loswal. Please go ahead.
Questions and Answers:
Sumit Sinha
Yeah, hi sir. So can you talk on the current scenario? How. How the city. The city wise impact or any benefit of say lowering outbound. So how is the scenario for the hospitality industry?
Puneet Chhatwal
Sumanth, I just help me clarify. You mean because of the West Asian crisis or you mean because of the comments made by some leadership or by the Prime Minister or I can’t follow because we are having business as usual. Dubai is down, Maldives is down, London is okay and domestic is very strong. So it’s a very simple answer. Are you there Suman? Yeah,
Sumit Sinha
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about the current scenario say in the month of say April and in the current month how is the business considering current scenario?
Puneet Chhatwal
The business was a bit sluggish I would say. March was a difficult month, beginning of April was difficult. Middle of April came the stability. Since then we are seeing strong growth but you know there is months and weeks. I think it’s important to to state what we just said in terms of our outlook. We remain fairly confident that we will again deliver double digit growth between 12 let’s say and 14% in the FY27 fiscal. And should everything subside invest Asian crisis you could expect more. The figures in line with what we had in the last financial year which was not easy either because we started with Pahelgam in April, Sindur in May, airline accident in June.
You know you can go on and on and finish the year with the West Asian crisis. So I don’t see any reason especially in light of our not like for like growth that we should be able to do double digit top line growth.
Sumit Sinha
And when we see the subsidiary performance console standalone overall operating level we have seen a subdued performance. So which geography has done better say St. James or us? How is the performance in this quarter
Unidentified Participant
Suman? Hi Ankur. You’re talking about Q4. Hello sumant. Q4 Sumant. I think Q4 kind of reflective of the foliar trends which you saw on the slide we put out. So there was definitely impact after the West Asia conflict in the global market. So we did see some loss of revenues in some of our hotels internationally including London and you know, and that’s what we try to summarize. Also on the slide on impact of the west asia conference, about 40 to 50 crores of revenues on the console basis and almost close to, almost close to 100 crores on an enterprise basis which got impacted because of cancellation and reschedulement of events, you know, which were kind of last minute cancellation which came through.
So But I think the good thing about this is that domestic has been pretty resilient and even in the month of April domestic has actually done quite well. It’s pacing quite well. Keeping in mind that you know international travel is kind of subdued right now. So let’s just see how the quarter goes. Overall you know we think double digit growth should be possible on the Line which was just guided by Mr. Jetwal.
Operator
Thank you so much, sir.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Charlene Kumar from UBS India. Please go ahead.
Shaleen Kumar
Yeah, hi. Am I audible?
Unidentified Participant
Yes. Hi Charlene.
Shaleen Kumar
Thank you. So you know, when I was looking your presentation and I was looking for the city by performance for FY26, I think there’s a big variation. We can see like 5% of something like 15 kind of a growth. Right. That’s the kind of variation in FY26. So you know, is there any market where you’re looking that the trend will change? For instance, Mumbai or Goa, you’re looking at, you know, your base is favorable or you know, if something else is happening where you, those, those cities can help you achieve, you know, your double digit growth rate.
So that’s, that’s question number one.
Puneet Chhatwal
Good, good question, Charlene. I think half of it you answered Mumbai, the base is very high so it’s difficult to get to 15 growth. But Goa we have seen almost in the month of April north of 25% growth in all our hotels. Some have gone to 30 and beyond. So averaging at 25. Goa is definitely back since the last few months, March and April and the trend is not changing. Kerala could improve and Chennai could also improve. But Delhi had a very good year last year. So Delhi and Mumbai have a high base.
Shaleen Kumar
Okay. Actually I thought you will say Mumbai because I think there was some renovation happening. Right. So I thought that in
Puneet Chhatwal
President we had renovations. So president will show an exceptional gain. But, but you know, Lands End has been operating consistently at 90% plus occupancy. So only rates can go up. And we have if we on a very high base. If you do high single digit is good. If you do 6, 7, 8% on a 20,000 RevPAR is as good as you do 15% on a 10,000 repair.
Shaleen Kumar
Then there is actually a fundamental question that why like PI are operating at 90%? Like I know this is a very basic question I’m asking like why don’t we see that let’s increase the rate by more and, and maybe operate at let’s say 80, 85% or do you think no, 90% is better than keeping the rate where they are? I mean I’m asking that even 90% you have a, you have a lot of pricing power, isn’t it?
Puneet Chhatwal
Yeah, I don’t disagree with you but we prefer to do both increase the rate also and the occupancy also. So that’s what we have done. If you Go back four, five years back on or even six, seven if you look at the rates or the rep part together it’s more than doubled in our main hotels in Mumbai. So we also need that because you know in India you make money on food and beverage and more of the people staying in hotels eat in hotels. So I think that’s also important and to find the right balance. Given my experience, personal experience of the west, you look more at only rate and occupancy because FNB is not the profit making in most of the western parts.
So that’s a different way of looking at it.
Shaleen Kumar
One last question on your guidance, if we work with even 12%, you know, for let’s say you able to target 12% in FY27 how should one think about breaking that growth? I mean how should I think About RevPAR or ARR plus occupancy plus the new asset contribution plus anything else? Is there a possibility to give a broad breakup? Even a range is fine. It will help us to think and conceptualize what kind of growth we are looking at on various parameters.
Puneet Chhatwal
See if we take your example of 12% it would be fair to say that 4% or to 5% will come from new businesses and not like for like growth because we’ll be opening 60 hotels and then we have Atmanthan and all these new businesses that we have added. If only 7 is left
Unidentified Participant
To
Puneet Chhatwal
Come from the rest it would be fair to say, you know, occupancies are at a very high level. So you could have most of the growth coming which is driven by rate only.
Unidentified Participant
So you know, I think we’ve maintained Charlene consistently that on a sustained basis high single digits, you know anyway starting from 7ish, going up 8, 9% depending on the hotel and the region and, and the quarter you pick, that’s the kind of range for, for life for like. And then of course you know, you could have quarters and you end up doing double digit like we did this quarter. So that is a positive surprise. We did 12% on standalone as you saw from our announcement. So that’s the endeavor to push it up.
But I think if you want to look at like a one or two year horizon, I think that’s a safe assumption will be in this, you know, mid plus to going high, close to high single digits. And then of course the good thing is the pipeline is very real. It’s not a pipeline which is not converting to opening. So you see a consistent trend of hotels moving from pipeline into openings. And then of course that Keeps on chugging the management fee income plus also whatever keeps coming on our balance sheet. So it’s another full year benefit should come through.
Frankfurt is a bit delayed. We expect it to open in June now. And that’s also in a way it’s good because of the situation the way it is. It also helps from that point of view. So we’ll get the benefit of that in this, in this fiscal year. And then the the rest of the hotels which will open on management contract and, and the ginger leases
Achal Kumar
Will add to
Unidentified Participant
The not like for like growth.
Shaleen Kumar
Got it.
Unidentified Participant
Acquisitions to hopefully fire. You know, Atman et cetera is doing very well and I think as well as the ANK Pride integration is going very strong. So you know, from a business perspective, our sort of endeavor is to ensure that we are able to integrate the brand portfolio in this fiscal year and therefore get the benefit of that, let’s say towards the second half of this fiscal year.
Shaleen Kumar
Is it fair to assume then that’s 12 to 14% bridge then a lot will basically then if we’re looking at AR from 7 to 9, that’s where the middle will move. Right. So
Unidentified Participant
We
Shaleen Kumar
Can work with the base case of 7%.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, that’s right. I think these are the tailwinds. They’re also little headwinds as you know because of the West Asian Conference there is right now the international hotels are a little bit subdued performance. We saw that in April. And so we are also watching the situation carefully. We have fortunately the way we don’t own hotels. So you know, but it’s still painful to see what’s happening there as well as the impact of you know, both Indian travelers as well as transit hub Dubai being a big transit hub, impacting our hotels in London and some of the other markets.
Shaleen Kumar
Thank you so much. Thank you so much and best of luck. I’ll join back.
Unidentified Participant
Thank you Raleigh.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Pratik Kumar from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Prateek Kumar
Yeah. Good evening sir and congrats for great results. My first question is on your foreign tourist mix. Have you seen any change in your foreign tourist mix in like past two, three months? Also related question is like on currency depreciation. So this is more like a technical question. When a foreign tourist is booking on your portal, he or she or she will be like looking at a lower rate now with currency depreciation or like. I mean my question is regarding your rates on your portal. Are rupee denominated or dollar denominated?
Unidentified Participant
So they are rupee Denominated. I think that’s, that’s a decision we took a few years back. So that remains the way it is. We do get the benefit of rupee depreciation in two ways. One is of course our international hotels translation happens at the average exchange rate for the, for the period. And the second is of course in a way it also this, you know, rupee depreciating in a way makes it more expensive for people to travel abroad. So domestic tourism and you know that’s one of the trends we have seen both in March, April and that I think will continue for the year.
You have drive, vacation, drive to vacation and consolidation of miles towards domestic resorts. I think that’s a strong one which we expect that trend to continue in this, in this fiscal year. On your other question, you know Pratik, on the percentage of tourists, I think it’s not moved dramatically at least for the fiscal year as we had mentioned earlier. It’s you know, close to 30% for standalone. It is what we call foreign tourists or people who are of having foreign passports. And that is slightly lower for the enterprise because you know, I guess the standalone has hotels in the bigger cities.
So that number is pretty much consistent for the year. We’ll see the trend how it continues. But I think the good part in all of this is the domestic tourism is holding up. The domestic travel has held up quite nicely and which is, which is supporting us.
Puneet Chhatwal
If I may add Prateek, the foreign tourist arrivals remains a hidden upside in perpetuity. We are all waiting for it
Unidentified Participant
But
Puneet Chhatwal
One day it will come and it will come by leaps and bounds and then that will help us compensate. But it’s at the moment is challenging. The flying time is longer but the currency as you said that will help in choosing India as a destination. And a lot of connectivity was happening through the Gulf with the airlines the way they are, which is also moved the pricing of the tickets very expensive on other airline carriers. So it should normalize and at some point I think we will have some good campaigns on India as a destination and we are doing our bit as you know as at different rate fairs in which we will keep doing but it remains a hidden upside in perpetuity.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah,
Prateek Kumar
My question is also regarding like has that number of 30% or slightly lower has that changed in like month of March, April maybe?
Puneet Chhatwal
Of course. See but there is one thing which you have to know which has changed in India. We should not look at foreign arrivals as tourists only. I think we have to coin a new term called foreign Business arrivals, whether they come for AI summit or they come for now the Africa summit which is going to happen or in September, October we’ll have again a B20 or a G20 kind of event. We are happening. So the BRICS, sorry I’m saying not G20, B20, the BRICS in September, October. So there is a lot of these events which have moved to India as India’s gained economic prominence.
So a lot of delegations keep coming. Just last week was Vietnamese delegation head of state and if you start from the month of Jan, the German chancellor and you had December, you had the British premier. You know everybody’s come in. So it’s something which is not going to stop in foreseeable future. So a lot of people who come on business tend to combine other cities for business and that is helping us. Tourist per se is on a decline and has stayed subdued to less than pre Covid level.
Unidentified Participant
And I think it’s fair to say that there will be some impact of you know non resident guests coming number going down for us. But I think that’s that’s being made up at least domestically. We see our numbers in April, they seem done quite well. So I think they may be made up by both the not like for life growth as well as the domestic bias consolidation.
Prateek Kumar
Sure. One other question on domestic tourism. While you were saying clearly looking like leisure tourism is benefiting but have you seen any changes in corporate travel slow down or in terms of the mix of corporate versus leisure particularly for domestic.
Unidentified Participant
Not. Not meaningfully impacting the numbers. So we will see how it will monitor in the sense, you know, given what’s. What’s been announced over the weekend, if there any impact. But as of now, nothing.
Prateek Kumar
Sure. Thank you and all the best.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Archal Kumar from hsbc. Please go ahead.
Achal Kumar
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. So first of all just going back to your comments about the domestic travel holding up and I guess as Ankur righty said that must have been replaced by international because international people are not able to travel. So do you see that sort of has replaced the international completely in terms of volume as well as the pricing. Of course I believe that international tourism is sort of a high end of the hotels but they say at the high end of the hotels. So how do you see that replacement?
And now especially after today’s comments from our honorable prime ministers not to take foreign travels, do you think domestic could actually hold up well and replace the international demand pretty well. Can you please give a Bit of a color on that. Your thoughts around that.
Unidentified Participant
So you’re right. I mean there was definitely some displacement. We did and I mentioned that in the beginning that on console about 40, 50 crores of impact, which obviously included some domestic impact as well as the international hotels.
Shaleen Kumar
So some
Unidentified Participant
Of it was has been a displacement from this quarter to maybe Q1 or Q2, depending on how, how things shape out. But is this, is this going to continue something we are also watching now, the impact of the recent announcement or the current announcement is something obviously not known. It could be a positive as well because it was just could just for more domestic sort of activities in the country. And so it’s too early to react to that statement, Anshul.
Achal Kumar
And especially, you know, since Mr. Modi asked for more work from home going back to the COVID times, do you think that if there’s more work from home could increase the length of the stay at your hotels? I mean is there any is any sort of color from your experience previously?
Unidentified Participant
So. Yeah, yeah. I mean those are all things we will have to just wait and watch. It’s also what shape and form this gets, you know, goes taken ahead and how it is implemented. It’s. It’s, you know, again too premature. But you know, I think the good thing is that the institutional memory has been built. Covid is only, you know, five, four, five years back. So. So everybody knows what to do if such a situation arises. And we will obviously figure out a way of handling that if it does come to that level.
But if it comes to that, there are various ways of figuring out whether we do more circulation, et cetera. Like we’re saying people have long stays or leisure markets can get a flip. So it’s a little bit of flux situation. So it’s very difficult to give an answer to you with some clarity. But I think the levers are there. The teams are have seen this situation before. So we are confident that whatever comes, whatever gets thrown at us, we’ll be able to take tackle it. Okay,
Achal Kumar
Fine. My second question was around the ARA growth. We have given the guidance of ara growth of 7 to 9%. Say assume 7%. So is that 7%? I mean, you know, how much of that you think it could be because of the changing mix? How much of that could be because of the revenue management? Are you doing strong revenue management? And Puneet spoke about digital. So yes, spending lot you strengthen digital, you know, and how much is the underlying ARR you think will grow? So can you please give a bit of a color breaking down your 7% please.
Unidentified Participant
So very broadly speaking, I think firstly 7 to 8% which I mentioned, or 7 to 9 which I mentioned was more of the revpar side. So the combination of occupancy and ARR and also the FNB side for more like a total revenue type of same store growth. You know, again, various levers exist. Revenue management is clearly a big sort of focus area for us. We have actually invested fair bit of money behind that by you know, getting some of the latest tools on that front. And you know, we are seeing some benefit of that actually already come through because what we measure very carefully is what is our RGI relative to the comp set for all the key hotels.
And I think this is wherever we have kind of deployed, deployed these tools. You can see the, you can see that actually in the RGI numbers. Now if the market sells a little bit subdued then of course that also shows that that will get a fit in revenues. But I think the sort of the lead indicator is RGI and I think that we’re happy to see that we continue to maintain the premium. And you know, I think this is an ongoing exercise. It’s hard to break down that 7, 8% saying that how much is from. Absolutely.
Revenue management on inflation, you know, it’s going to be a combination of several things. What crew business you take, what you don’t, what you decline, etc. What kind of events are happening in the city. So I think it’s, it’s, it’s a combination of several things which actually go into that. It’s more of an art rather than a pure science. So hard to pinpoint and say, okay, this is how we will dissect the 78 percentage number.
Achal Kumar
No, I mean you’re right. Why ask? This is because, you know, I think in the PTP, in the PPD have given 2% crew business. So I mean at such a high occupancy levels, are you going to do strong revenue management? Are you going to remove the low ARR business? You know, so from that perspective I was coming through and of course you’re spending a lot on digital from that perspective, thinking that what space or what sort of leeway you have to play with the revenue management and further increase ARR, you know, and that’s, that’s exactly where I was coming from.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, no, I think that’s, that’s a good question we have. I mean this is definitely an area for us to keep on improving not only, I mean within this also, you know what, you could have different types of like mice is one segment. You could have corporate mice versus you know, individual mice transient. We’ve also got some mixture of corporate transient versus non corporate transient. So I think those are all levers which you know the commercial team actually does this for a living and they do a pretty good job of that.
And you can also see on the right hand side of the chart how the distribution mix is also you know, evolving with the website investment coming up. And you’ve seen a gain of almost 2 percentage points. So you know all of these goes into getting the revpars up where they are.
Achal Kumar
Okay, my final question is around the trading in the first quarter while you guided for 12% growth in revenue in FY27 how the Q1 looks like? I mean do you see impact in April, May going on from March or do you see the sort of booking levels are holding up? Well and what kind of business do you see on the book as at same point last year, please.
Unidentified Participant
So I think Q1 has both headwinds and tailwinds. The headwind is of course the best Asia conflict which we, which we’ve talked about. I think the good tailwind is that we have a good base to sort of work on and then that’s particularly true for second half of May and end of till end of June. So I think that will play to our strength. I think we should do okay overall. Of course I think between domestic and international domestic market will I think do much better than international. And that’s what we are sort of sort of going.
We think we should be above 12% for the quarter.
Achal Kumar
Okay, perfect. Thank you so much Ankur. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Samit Sinha from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Ankur Dalwani
Yes, thank you very much. So first was I wanted to stress test that 12 to 14%. I can imagine it’s not a science but just trying to see how you arrived at number. Did you just take the weakness in April and kind of calibrate the rest of your based on that or are you making some assumption about the extent of the duration of this conflict? That’s my first question. I guess I’ll have follow ups after that.
Puneet Chhatwal
Yeah, sure. I think we have, you know we have key account management, we have some corporates, we know what rates we have locked in for the current financial year. Second, we know what are the number of wedding dates, what is the business on the books. Number three, what is our not like for like growth. We are expecting to open 60 new hotels then we have certain income from them. But more importantly also the 26 plus 30 hotel, 26 plus 36 hotels which we opened in last year, they were also in the growth phase.
So they have not stabilized. So I think their returns also should increase. So if I take all this into consideration and then add to it, what are the other possibilities that we have in terms of other businesses, how they are scaling up, what are our initiatives? I have said it all in my opening remarks. Asset management, which places are under renovation? As an example, last year we had 100 rooms less in Taj, Ganges and Varanasi. This year we have added. Last year we had two floors less in Taj palace, which we said to you in our previous quarterly calls, they’re all renovated, they are back.
Similarly, we had two company owned hotels less in Ektanagar, the Vivanta and Ginger. Then we have some other critical Ginger openings on capital light models. So I think growth is a very important part coupled with asset management. And then comes what everybody asks. All the analysts always ask, only RevPAR. And I’ve always maintained, and I still say revpar is one very important metric, but not the sole metric in India. Revpar is very important because your total revenue per available room has sometimes a more significant impact, especially if it is driven lot by in certain quarters by a lot by the sire dates or the auspicious dates you have for weddings and other activities.
Ankur Dalwani
Got it. Okay. Then in terms of your fiscal 27 number of openings, if I’m seeing it correctly, did you reduce the number of rooms by 500 for this year?
Puneet Chhatwal
I don’t know that. Once again, Ankur, would you have idea, did we reduce 500 rooms?
Unidentified Participant
This is your saying opening for FY20,
Ankur Dalwani
Correct? Yes,
Unidentified Participant
I think it’s pretty much what we had mentioned. 5,000 keys on an average per annum. So see, these
Puneet Chhatwal
Are rounded figures. They don’t any growth which is of an existing. See, last year we added Gateway Palo Lim in Goa or we added Gateway in Ahmedabad. They never hit the pipeline the time they got signed and by the time they got open was like a few weeks difference. So there are certain properties that come in ones which we from a prudence point of view show is what we already know which is signed and announced to the market. So some of these may get delayed. So let’s say instead of 5,000, maybe we open 4,500, but there could be 5, 7, 800 that may come in which we don’t know of.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, because you know, on the ongoing basis we keep on having discussions for platform partnerships which could. This could easily get us, you know like mentioned 300, 400 keys through a portfolio of partnerships we’ve had, we’ve had a few of them signed last year and some of I’m not talking about acquisition, I’m talking about partnerships. So these are something which is a work in progress thing and can definitely make up for any, any shortfall that we have on the organic side. And but I think this is a fairly good number to work with.
Roughly 5,000 keys in a give and take 5%. But you know, I think the key point here is that large portion of this is management keys and therefore the impact on the P and L is actually very, very minuscule and that that’s actually made up more than made up by what the existing ones which have opened this year could be delivering on
Shaleen Kumar
The full year.
Unidentified Participant
So you know, more than the physical keys. I think the impact on PNL is actually quite small. Very, very small number.
Ankur Dalwani
Got it. No, I can imagine you guys are balancing a lot of things. So one final question. So Puneet, as you think about if you look at your pipeline, I think by the end of fiscal 30, you’ll probably end up at 30 owned and operate. 30% owned and operated. 70% is going to be under the capital light model. In the last time we met, which was during your analyst day, you had said a goal was 43, 67, something like that, 37, 63. So this number seems to have changed. So is there going to be an update in terms of your long term roces and things based on this kind of change?
Puneet Chhatwal
Very, very good question. So because you remind us it’s time to announce our next capital market day which we will do so in the next few weeks. We were just waiting for the right moment and now that we have completed the bridge transaction and we would, we are hoping to announce also the, you know, we have signed more than 30amendments to that ank and pride portfolio of which 15 should convert and open in this first quarter itself. I think it’s time for the next capital market day to be announced so we can give you more accurate guidance because with the uncertainty around what was happening with the West Asian crisis, all the focus was there but allow us to do that.
I think it’s better that what we said we’ll do 63% capital light and if it is moving towards 70 on a larger port portfolio, we are obviously very pleased with it. And I’m sure you are also pleased with that.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, I think just to add, I think we didn’t have the hindsight of the ank Pride portfolio when we did the capital market day, that portfolio is actually largely, it is actually completely capitalized with the exception of, you know, very few hotels which are on the balance sheet. So essentially that has obviously made the portfolio look more capitalized, but it is not at the cost of letting go of any capital heavy assets. It’s actually an on top of that.
Ankur Dalwani
Got it. Okay, just
Puneet Chhatwal
To sum it up, that is was a very important part of our introductory remarks on building resilience and scale, by brand, by contract type and by geography.
Ankur Dalwani
Fair enough. Yeah. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Karan Khanna from Ambit Capital. Please go ahead.
Karan Khanna
Hi, good evening and thanks for the opportunity and congrats on double digit RAT power growth during the quarter despite external headwinds. My first question to you, Puneet and Ankur. With the overall crude oil volatility and global geopolitical scenario feeding into aviation costs and broader inflation, while we haven’t heard anything yet, but if we start seeing capacity reduction announcements by domestic carriers over the next few months and if this volatility continues, how should we think about the second order impact on travel demand, pricing, power and perhaps even the operating margins over the next two to three years?
Puneet Chhatwal
Karan, every crisis is an opportunity. Some of the brands that you hear today were created in the worst crisis where everything came to a halt. Cumin, ama. All these started without any upfront capital investment during COVID And for a sector that has kind of seen zero revenue in a lockdown, I think a few shifts here and there might create opportunities, even, let’s say, work from home. But the home could be in Holiday Village or in Fort Aguada or in one of our AMA homestays and trails. So there is a lot of change that may happen and also may not necessarily happen because we don’t know, maybe the war is called off, but we are monitoring it very closely.
And one of the reasons we got to the growth in Q4 and a decent start in April and the first 10 days of May is we do a lot of tactical stuff. We cannot control where the market is going, but we can control our market share. So we can increase our market share with the strength of our brand, with the strength of our sales and marketing activities. And we have been successfully able to do that. I think we remain overall quite optimistic. If a doomsday scenario comes in, then it’s doomsday for all. Then we figure out what we’ll do.
The only difference this time would be last time when that happened, we had A lot of debt this time we have none and we have a lot of cash so it might throw other opportunities.
Karan Khanna
And just on the comments regarding Revpar and if you look at FY26, despite several one off headwinds every quarter, you still manage 78% occupancy and 8% RevPAR growth for FY26. But going into FY27 where you’re also talking about the industry tailwinds and also a favorable base, the 7% or 8% RevPAR guidance like for like is that on the lower end because of these geopolitical uncertainties or are we nearing somewhere, you know, the fag end of the cycle wherein growth here on will not be pricing led but not like so like driven
Unidentified Participant
So on cycle you see a chart on supply, we’ve looked at what’s got announced, what’s really got built and I think we feel reasonably certain that you know, this is going to be a tight supply situation at least for the reasonable future. And therefore, you know, Revpar should continue to sort of be inflation plus giving you the ability to pass on costs etc. And beyond that. So I think that that is the context in which we are sort of dealing. Of course there is on top of this you have this sort of overhang of what’s happening geopolitically.
So there is some temperament. We have tempered that outlook with what’s happening geopolitically. But that’s the upside also you know, at the end of the day this is not going to last forever and like we said in our slide that you know, we lost out on certain amount of revenues which are actually quite visible on basis the pace we had February 20th. So I think that’s, that’s also the upside. We see that you know, as and when things become normal which could be, you know, this month, it could be six months.
We don’t know that but we’re well positioned to take advantage of that as and when that happens.
Karan Khanna
Sure. And then lastly on the cancellations during the quarter, specifically on mice business that was lost, are you expecting this business to return over next few quarters or has that gotten cancelled altogether? And also an outbound travel which is expected to see a slowdown, are you seeing any sustained substitution of that by domestic luxury and leisure demand and perhaps do you expect that trend to continue beyond FY27 as well?
Unidentified Participant
It’ll be a mix. All these things are always a mix. Some of that does get deferred and comes back. We postpone our own sort of conference hospitality conference. So some of that actually is something which gets deferred. But and of course in hospitality there will be some element which will be lost because you know, knights are gone. But you know, I think that’s, that’s part and parcel of the game. So you know, we’ve been sort of factoring that in as we look at the forecast for Q1 and for the year.
Karan Khanna
Great. Thanks, Ankur and Puneet and all the best. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Murtaza from Kotak securities. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, hi sir. Just on some data points on routes and Tad sats, if you could give your full year revenue and EBITDA numbersat is there in the segment. If you see the slide, it’s there on slide 26. These are impacted by. So I would like to just clarify that some of the growth numbers you see on EBITDA which is lower than revenue primarily because of the levy impact which we had called out at the beginning of the year, that there will be this year some impact of levy which was accounted in a different manner as per the how the airports have now charged that to Taj SARS and to every catering company.
Adjusted for that, the margin actually expanded by a percentage. But the revenue growth would have been lower. It would have been more like 11 12% and not 16%. Sure. And roots Ginger. Yeah, I think Roots also, I mean we’ve given the Ginger slide which gives you overall revenue of close to 700 crores, which is effectively Roots Corporation and Ginger Mumbai Airport. Because you know, the thing is Roots Corporation does not own Ginger Mumbai Airport. So therefore from a business perspective makes sense now to look at Ginger Console rather than looking at routes on the standalone legal entity.
So this has grown at about you know, 709 crore, which has grown nicely and maintain a very high EBITDA margin. That’s also on slide 29. On new business.
Operator
Does it answer the questions?
Unidentified Participant
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We will take the last question from the line of Rahul Jain from Philip Capital. Please go ahead.
Unidentified Participant
Good evening, sir. Congratulations on a resilient set of numbers. I just have one question on the operating leverage side, the annual standalone portfolio. I mean the revenue has grown high single digit, but we’ve still managed to expand our margins at a decent rate in FY26 and FY26 console. Numbers on the margin front were relatively flattish, but we’re still seeing good, healthy like for life and non like goods. So how do you, how do you see the margins going forward? Do we still have room for operating leverage to play out in the system or is it more of a mix between the non like and like?
Puneet Chhatwal
You know, I think there is still scope for improvement. And the reason is that most of these brands, as we have said, are in an infancy phase. They have not yet scaled up. Up on top of that we had high costs of acquisitions. It’s not just that you acquire something, you have high legal fees, high travel costs, costs of due diligence. So we are very happy with the 35% margin as long as I’ve said it in several quarterly calls that we did not put any upfront capital investment with the new brands. So we need to but put enough horsepower behind them in terms of sales, marketing talent, people to scale up that business.
So that’s how we are scaling up our portfolio. We have more than increased it by 400% in last eight years. And at the same time we have more than, you know, at an enterprise level, we have almost increased our revenue by 300%. And by the right mix, by brand, by geography and by contract type, we are getting this margin and the resilience in the margins. So there is a little bit of art and a science attached to it. Art is the art of growth and science is the kind of growth that you do to create that resilience in your margin and create elasticity in the portfolio.
Portfolio by removing whatever volatility is possible to be removed in this kind of business.
Unidentified Participant
Understood. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we take that as a last question for today. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Puneet Chatwal for closing comments.
Puneet Chhatwal
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us on this call. We are very pleased to have shared our results with you and the management summary. We look forward to interacting with you in the next fiscal and in the next quarter in the maximum of 90 days from now. Thank you very much everybody. Have a wonderful evening. Thank you.
Shaleen Kumar
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you on behalf of the Indian Hotels Company limited that concludes this conference. Thank you everyone for joining us. And you may now disconnect your lines.