Priya Thakur, founder, LaRiSa Hotels and Resorts; and Randhir Narayan, founder, AM Hotel Kollection
Four years after the Covid shock, the hospitality industry in India is entering a period of maturity. A significant number of hotel firms have gone in for IPOs. A host of properties have changed hands. According to JLL data, the hospitality sector saw transaction activity worth ₹2,943.38 crore in 2024. Consolidation and strategic deals are happening.
One such deal earlier this year was between LaRiSa Hotels and Resorts and AM Hotel Kollection, two relatively new players. It’s illustrative to hear why they joined hands, to understand where the opportunities lie.
The start
In 2015, Priya Thakur, a sales and marketing professional with varied experience in the corporate sector, set up LaRiSa Hotels and Resorts in Manali at the urging of her father. “We had our orchards there. At that time, tourists were flocking to Manali and people from outside were coming in and building hotels, so my father said, ‘why don’t you start something’.” Steadily, Thakur expanded to eight properties in different locations, several of them owned.
Meanwhile, around the same time, in 2014-15, Randhir Narayan, a hospitality veteran who had worked with the Oberoi group, Kuoni and Xander group, decided to start AM Hotel Kollection to manage experiential boutique hotels. He scaled up his venture to 18 properties.
Given that both had a strong belief in experiential hospitality, they decided to combine strengths, announcing the merger this February. Their combined operating revenue exceeds ₹100 crore, with 30 running hotels boasting about 1,000 rooms, two more almost launched, and four more about to be signed. Says Narayan, “We are one team now. We will be doing everything together, with three brands to offer.”
8fold by LaRiSa resort at Jibhi, Himachal Pradesh
While the LaRiSa brand will be used for luxurious high-end properties with tariffs hovering above ₹50,000 a day, a new brand, 8fold (named after the eight paths of Buddha), has been created for budget and midscale (₹4,000-9,000). And then there is the AM brand for properties that defy segmenting.
The sweet spot
So, where is the white space for the combined entity? Especially with multinational and Indian hotel chains on the prowl for acquisitions?
Says Thakur, “From an owner’s perspective, if you’re running a 20-room property, hypothetically, you don’t want expensive software, or multiple managers, as happens with bigger chains.” She stresses that, being owners themselves, they understand the pain of management costs.
Adds Narayan: “We are more rational on the cost side, which means better value to the owner of the asset.”
So will they charge a smaller management fee? “No, the management fee structure is usually 4 per cent of the top line… you cannot tamper because that’s tested,” he says. But the difference is that the cost of reservations, marketing and other transactions will be either nil or very small.
“The other flexibility we offer is that we are not too fussed about standardisation,” he says, especially for boutique experiential hotels, which call for individualistic looks.
Thakur and Narayan plan to have skin in the game with a mixed model. “We are doing joint ventures with owners, leasing, and pure management.”
The sector is on a roll currently. It’s the right time to add muscle in the chase for growth.
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Published on April 27, 2025
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