India Hotels & Homestay Summit Sparks Dialogue on Innovation, Expansion, and Partnership

4 July 2025

It was an honor to participate in the India Hotels and Homestay summit and interact with innovators redefining the concept of luxury.

Hotels and homestays play a big role in the development of the tourism industry by giving travellers more options to stay in their favorite destination. It is absolutely critical to develop more holiday properties to expand the industry into new locations and boost the overall tourism output.

While the outlook was generally positive a couple of concerns around differentiation and competition were shared by both hoteliers and homeowners.

Rise of OTA platforms have diminished direct sales for the properties forcing them to compete with each other on price. And not every property can be in the prime location.

This has presented a tough challenge for investors who understand the importance of building more properties across locations but unsure about returns.

Homestays face their own set of challenges. They lack the workforce and brand power of hotels and are entirely dependent on online platforms for their income.

However, saturation of properties online has also presented property owners with an opportunity to build partnerships with other owners and create travel circuits which can enhance the travel experience by creating destination specific ecosystems while consolidating their position in the market.

Destinations are not going to change. What needs to happen is that we need to create new travel experiences and expand into locations that have remained unexplored. Homestays have a distinct advantage as they are cheaper to build and hence better suited for experimentation unlike hotels that need a thorough market evaluation and much investment.

Infact hoteliers and homestay owners could work together to create a portfolio that is more evenly spread out rather than being concentrated in a few locations.

Competing in the same market space will lead to diminishing returns for everyone but through partnerships and cooperation it is possible to achieve better outcomes and sidestep the problems of differentiation and competition altogether.

Akshat Jiwan Sharma

Strategy Consultant--Innovation/ Materials science/International relations/Telecommunications/Digital Transformation/Partnerships Mobile/whatsapp:+919654119771 email:getellobed@gmail.com

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Notes by Akshat Jiwan Sharma

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