THIS IS the second time that Stephen Holmes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham Worldwide Corporation (see photo), has been to India and he is happy with what he sees. "I enjoyed it then and I am enjoying it this trip as well. It’s an amazing marketplace. Amazing culture and great growth potential,’ he told me during our interview. ’I think all the indicators are pointing towards great growth in India. If you look at the demographics, you have got a very young, very technology savvy, consumer base here.

THIS IS the second time that Stephen Holmes, Chairman and
Chief Executive Officer of Wyndham Worldwide Corporation, has been to India and
he is happy with what he sees.

I enjoyed it then and I am enjoying it this trip as well.
It’s an amazing marketplace. Amazing culture and great growth potential,” he
told me during our interview.

“I think all the indicators are pointing towards great
growth in India. If you look at the demographics, you have got a very young,
very technology savvy, consumer base here. By 2020, you are expected to have a
20 million strong middle class,” he told me. It’s very similar to what the
company had seen in China a decade. That kind of growth, in his view also fuels
growth of the tourism industry.

“The biggest challenges for India have been infrastructure
and regulation. If you talk to our hotel owners, who we have signed deals with
(Wyndham has signed ten new properties during Holmes’ visit)--the biggest
challenge seems to be regulations. I want to build more but it takes so long to
get approvals to be able to. That is an area which I think still needs to
develop in order to really fuel the continued growth of the tourism industry,”
he elucidated.

According to Holmes, China recognised decades ago that they
wanted to try to keep as many Chinese as they could within the country for
their holidays, instead of seeing them leave with the money abroad. So, China
focussed on developing infrastructure to make it easier to fly between
different parts. They made the regulatory environment friendlier to development
of hotels and time share resorts and that spurned growth, he said. “We saw
rapid growth of our brands and brands all across the spectrum from Wyndham
Grands, beautiful five star hotels, to economy Super 8 hotels, which is
actually our largest brand in China. There was just an environment encouraging
growth in China,” he added. Holmes said he had witnessed vast improvement in
India compared to the last five years, but the change that you don't see that
needs to happen is the change is the regulations. “It’s about making it easier
for someone to build a hotel, without having to go and get seven different
permits for seven different lifts in their hotel,” Holmes told me.

“For us, India is just a combination great growth potential
and some growth disappointment over the last 20 years. You look at other
markets like China, where we announced our 1000th hotel opening and we started
in both markets about the same time,” he said.

Holmes, who has been serving in his current position from
the time that Wyndham was listed in the New York Stock Exchange in 2006. At
that time he was chairman and CEO. He is an an accountant by training and
worked in Blackstone group while they entered the hotel space, with Wyndham
being their first transaction, so the connection is an old one.

“Our business is the hospitality business. We are global, we
are in different segments of the hospitality business. We are not just a hotel
company, we also have time share and time share exchange. We are the largest
renter of homes, villas and cottages in Europe,” he told me.

In India, specifically, the company has 25 hotels with four
different brands of the group right now, this is expected to grow to 75 hotels
within three years.

“We have a long range plan for India, for both the hotel and
the time share business. If you look at the backlog, some of the hotels won't
open up till 2019. We are planning out for continuing growth for this market
and bringing out new brands like Super 8 to open one more avenue for growth,”
he said.

When asked on how much attention Wyndham was paying to the
mid-market segment of the hospitality pie, I was told that the industry had a
total of 1,00,000 plus branded rooms in the market, with 56,000 under construction.
Wyndham had 42 new hotels totalling 4700 rooms. As far as brand portfolio was
concerned, most of Wyndham brands catering to the mid-market segment were
already present in India.

On the subject of market disruptors who are also making
their mark on the mid-segment, Holmes told me, “We are experiencing similar competition
all around the world. In markets that have been established for quite some time,
like the European rental market for example, Airbnb has been around. It is
their largest market,” he began, adding that Wyndham was in fact, the largest
renter of managed projects in Europe and hasn’t seen any decline in business. “I
think this disruptor market as you define it, has been out there for a long
time and people have accessed it in different ways. Lately it’s been more in
the news because of Wall Street pumping it up,” he said.

On the time share side of the business, Wyndham had 130
resorts now affiliated with RCI and are expecting it to go up to 170 in the
next three years, Holmes said. The RCI business is a different segment which
Wyndham purchased in 1996. Club Mahindra is RCI’s largest customer in India. “It’s
a very rapidly growing part of the business, but it’s totally under penetrated,”
he said, explaining that penetration across the US is currently at 5 per cent
of potential timeshare owners actually owning timeshares. In India, its 450,000
families out of a potential 200 million within the next five years. The growth
potential is enormous.

“I think we will see the time share business explode here in
India over the next five years,” he concluded.