Christopher J Nassetta, president and global CEO, Hilton Worldwide, is a man on the move. The 50-year-old chief of the closely held hospitality chain says he spends three-fourths of a year travelling across the globe as part of his responsibility to oversee around 3,900 hotels spread across 90 countries.
Nassetta must like traveling a great deal. In fact, Hilton accelerated its pace of expansion outside its home market in the US after Nassetta came on board in 2007, soon after private equity giant Blackstone purchased the chain. At that time, around 85% of Hilton’s pipeline was within the US. It’s changed since. Currently, more than 60% of its pipeline is outside the US. In the last six years, Hilton opened more than 1,100 hotels globally.
Nassetta, who was in Mumbai recently, met us in the lobby lounge of the Hilton Hotel, located close to the international airport. In a meeting that lasted an hour and a half, he made it clear that he is excited about the Indian market and he believes that the country’s fundamentals ? huge population, rising incomes, improving infrastructure, among others ? offer a strong growth opportunity.
“India is the best story for the hospitality industry from the fundamentals point of view,” he says, without appearing to be praising a country he’s visiting. In fact, Nassetta considers India as his biggest growth market. A quintessential hotelier ? fit, dressed in a dark blue suit with an elegant printed tie and neatly gelled hair ? he says India’s supply of 1,80,000 rooms is much lower than the total room inventory in any US city, say, New York or Orlando. The US, incidentally, has over 3.6 million hotel rooms ? the highest in the world.
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Source: Reeba Zachariah & Shubham Mukherjee (2013). Hilton aims to have 50 hotels in India by 2016, The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Hilton-aims-to-have-50-hotels-in-India-by-2016/articleshow/19642561.cms published Apr 20, 2013. Viewed Apr 25, 2013,