Among his earliest moves was moving to a capital-light model. When Chhatwal joined IHCL, just 44% of its portfolio ran on management contracts. Today, the ratio is 50:50. The plan is to move to a 40:60 model. “If you are on a quick growth path, you can’t build on your own; for a better-hedged portfolio, you shouldn’t own everything. Asset-light models enable faster growth and more profitability. It gives you fee-based growth, which leads to margin expansion,” he explains.

Chhatwal doesn’t agree that Taj’s appeal has gone down for the younger generation. “That’s not correct. Taj has always been dil se and people have stayed with us for generations. We made a few bold moves (launching business hotel brand Vivanta and value brand Ginger) in the early 2000s and then the world changed upside down — there was the global financial crisis, and thereafter, the Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba fell victim to the 26/11 attack. That put us in a loss-making spiral from 2008-17.”

Between 2008 and 2017, when the company wasn’t making money, it downgraded several iconic properties, including the likes of Holiday Village (Goa), Fort Aguada (Goa) and Fisherman’s Cove (Mahabalipuram) to Vivanta. Though the decision made sense at that point in time because they didn’t see the required revenue contribution, Chhatwal felt the need to upgrade them back to the old glory. “These hotels together with the 20-30 hotels we signed immediately brought Taj to a 75-plus portfolio, and started performing… Today, Taj has a portfolio of over 130 (including the ones in the pipeline) hotels.”

After upgrading the Vivanta properties as Taj, the company re-imagined Vivanta as a premium business hotel brand. With Ginger, however, Chhatwal has moved to an ownership model. “For an asset-light model to work, you need a big scale. You need to scale to 200-300 hotels, which gives you a fee. An asset-light model gives you just 6-7% of top line and if your revenue size is small, it’s not viable,” he says. The company currently has 66 operational Ginger hotels.

Chhatwal’s journey of reinventing and reimagining IHCL continues. The company is entering new countries. Recently it has entered Germany with a Taj in Frankfurt. Switzerland is next. It is also taking its popular F&B brands, House of Ming and Bombay Brasserie, outside India.

Chhatwal’s ambition to scale IHCL to a ₹15,000-crore behemoth by 2030 is certainly on track.

‘Project Win’

India’s Best CEOs 2025: Puneet Chhatwal is Reinventing Legacy at IHCL