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TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts, a prominent hospitality chain under Karma Hospitality LLP, is making significant strides in its expansion journey, led by Ajay Mehtani, Partner at TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts. With extensive experience in leadership roles across sales, marketing, asset management, and business development in global hotel brands, Mehtani has been instrumental in driving the brand’s successful transformation in the mid-scale segment. In an exclusive conversation with Hospitality Biz, Mehtani shares his vision for TreeHouse, its growth strategy, and the evolving trends shaping the hospitality industry.
From a successful role in research, what inspired you to take on the leadership role at TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts?
I have always been on the operational side of business. Sales & Marketing, Business Process Outsourcing, New Builds, Transitions & Franchise Support to Asset Management are some of the roles I have handled with leading global brands at regional level, hence running a business has always been a passion, that’s where all the action is! In India, Mid-Scale hotels present a huge opportunity with over a billion domestic travelers growing at almost 8% CAGR in the next 5-10 years. We at TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts are well positioned to take advantage of this space. TreeHouse is a great brand for value conscious domestic travellers, the reason why we are expanding rapidly across India, and hence making it an exciting venture for me.
What was your vision for the brand when you first started?
TreeHouse has been in existence for over 10 years. We were very clear from the beginning that we want to be mid-scale and domestic focused. We stuck to our core strategy and direction resulting in successful growth and expansion.
Tell us about TreeHouse in numbers? What is the future plan, say by 2030?
TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts has now moved to a multi-brand strategy. “TreeHouse Exotic” is our upper mid-scale product, expansive and large format to cater to Weddings, Events and other market segments. “TreeHouse”, our core mid-scale product offers great hotels to the value conscious travelers with one all day dining and small meeting areas in both business and leisure locations. Our third brand, “Nest by TreeHouse” Hotels Offers great Bed & Breakfast hotels which are at super locations for business or leisure providing clean-comfort at great prices.
Our growth strategy is very clear we don’t want to have many flags in the same city or geo locations as we feel that it dilutes returns for the Owners if they are within +/- 15-20% ADR range and guests get an option to move unless the locations are significantly apart and travel time is high within the city.
We at TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts want cities to have fewer hotels of our brands but they should be well located, and with the right partners. Hence, we want to reach a goal of 50+ hotels by 2030 with a right mix of all brands and at key locations.
What sets TreeHouse Hotels & Resorts apart from other boutique hotel brands in the hospitality industry?
I think the most important part in any mid-scale brand will always be consistency of product and service. Our Unique concept of Service “Dil-Se” which is a registered trademark with us, is our core value. We imbibe this service concept through our training programs at the associate level and our culture. Service from the heart, irrespective of the language we speak.
From a product standpoint our focus is very clear again across all our brands, young, vibrant, safe, clean-comfort for our guests.
How do you see the hospitality industry evolving over the next decade, and how is TreeHouse positioned to adapt to these changes?
It’s a very broad topic as it has many aspects to it. Change is always constant. It can be product, technology, service, design, delivery, and processes. All of these will continue to adapt to changing customer needs. We will adapt too, bringing in operational efficiencies, with internal and external help and with the changing needs of the guests.
We continue to engage with our customers to understand their requirements and read through various other industry research on trends to be able to understand what should be done to keep our products and services aligned to the needs of our guests. We are younger and smaller, so change is always easier for us to adapt. You would have heard about the book “Who says Elephants can’t dance?” but we think that it takes bigger players a little longer!
Can you share some key factors that have contributed to the success and growth of TreeHouse Hotels?
Our measure for success is simple, better ROI for our Owners, 8 of the hotels we operate are in the Customer Choice Awards for 2024, we expect to get to an 80% plus on this benchmark within our portfolio in the next year on our Customer Choice. Rest everything, we do revolves around this, continue to improve ROI and Guest Experience – as they say, Keep it Simple S..! If this is what we do well, everything else will follow.
How has TreeHouse Hotels expanded its footprint in the hospitality industry, and what are the plans for future growth?
Like I mentioned above with our multi-brand strategy we want to grow each of our brands – be it with conversion or with new build. We are currently involved with green field projects as well where we are building efficient products. Ideally, we would like to do more green field as we believe that we can achieve better ROI if products are efficiently designed and we are involved from the beginning, however that takes longer to expand hence we have an expansion plan which is a mix; conversions where possible and green field. Yes, we are opening more hotels over the next few months, Sonipat, second hotel in Amritsar, Belgaum, Hubli, Narmadapuram, Goa and more over the next few months.
What do you foresee as the biggest challenges in scaling TreeHouse Hotels?
I think the biggest challenge always is that new builds take time to open in India, however, in our case it is faster as some of our brand’s work with a smaller key count. With conversion you have challenges around the way the product is built and hence ROI gets impacted, however we try to make it work with the best of our abilities and whatever is possible to ensure a better ROI for our Owners.
What role does technology play in the guest experience at TreeHouse Hotels?
There is a lot of talk about how technology will change our lives and how AI will deliver experiences. At the shop floor level, I don’t see much happening. Yes, with guest apps, CRM etc. some level of personalization will become better. The issue is many systems are involved, do they talk to each other, how much, at what level, how expensive will they be, how much energy will they consume for processing data? Many such questions exist, sounds easier than it is! Ultimately, service experience “Moment of Truth” is at the hotel delivered by the associate, is he/ she trained to handle technology? Simple repeatable tasks will get automated and that will bring in some savings with technology.
I think there are many other ways that technology can assist, like Digi Yatra Check-in at Hotels which can enhance guest experience, and I had written about it when technology was introduced at the airport. Now we are seeing that at the Immigration counters at T3.
Sustainability is becoming a key focus in the hospitality industry. How is TreeHouse Hotels incorporating sustainable practices into its operations?
We are small mid-scale players, but we take sustainability seriously and try to implement sustainable initiatives at our hotels. Energy Savings, Glass Bottles, as far as possible get to a plastic free environment, linen reuse program we do them all under “Go-Green” initiatives.
How has the rise of experiential travel influenced TreeHouse Hotels’ offerings and services?
Most of our experiences that we deliver are in-house are at the TreeHouse Exotic brand be it wellness plans, sports activities etc. unless a TreeHouse Hotel is at a unique leisure location. In other brands/hotels we deliver city experiences through third parties which are bookable through our Booking Engine. When our Bleisure guest books a room they can book a visit to a popular site in the city or do a city tour.
These are based on what our guests are looking to do when they stay with us.
