Bengaluru-based Tamara Hospitality is set to double its footprint over the next three to five years, investing ₹480–540 crore across eight new hotel and resort projects as it expands both owned and asset-light operations.
The company will add about 600 rooms to its existing portfolio of 1,000-odd keys, Samir MC, chief executive officer (CEO) of Tamara Leisure Experiences, told Mint.
Alongside owned developments, Tamara plans to expand by managing and franchising hotels through an asset-light model that enables pan-India expansion with lower capital investment and risk.
This comes at a time when many Indian hotel ownership companies have been moving towards an asset-light or asset-right strategy over the last decade to balance out their portfolios amid strong travel demand.
Founded about 15 years ago by billionaire co-founders of Infosys, SD Shibulal and S Gopalakrishnan, Tamara operates nine self-owned and managed properties across its three brands. These include The Tamara, a luxury leisure property which it owns and operates, O by Tamara, which are upscale city hotels, as well as Lilac by Tamara, a mid-scale hotel brand. They also have Amal Tamara, an Ayurveda hospital in Alappuzha, Kerala.
The company has signed its first asset-light property, a 40-room Lilac hotel in Kufri, and is open to revenue-share leases and management contracts. This marks a strategic shift from Tamara’s earlier focus on fully owned assets as it looks to expand beyond its southern base.
The company is evaluating opportunities in Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and other metros through both ownership and asset-light structures. Tamara aims to at least double its portfolio over the next three to five years and grow earnings faster than asset count as it builds scale across owned and managed properties.
The CEO said the group reported turnover of around ₹150 crore in FY25 and its hotel-level operating margins are in the high 30% range, though company-level profitability is moderated by depreciation, as more than half its portfolio has opened in the past three to four years.
According to the ministry of corporate affairs filing accessed via Tracxn, Tamara Leisure Experiences reported revenue of ₹150.6 crore in FY25, up from ₹108.9 crore a year earlier, reflecting steady growth as new properties ramp up. However, the company posted a net loss of ₹16.4 crore as expenses rose with expansion, even as Ebitda improved to ₹7.97 crore from ₹1.26 crore in FY24.
Tamara's upcoming projects include a 24-boat electric houseboat resort in Alappuzha, a 50-cottage resort in Hosur, a 50-room wildlife resort in Kaziranga, a 112-room O by Tamara in Bodhgaya and a 190-room O by Tamara in Whitefield, Bengaluru. The company is also developing Lilacs hotel in Velankanni and Kaloor, and a standalone wedding venue in Madurai.
The committed pipeline of new hotels will attract an average investment of ₹80-90 lakh per key, he added. “With the Tamara Resorts brand, we want to keep them boutique and personalised and will only typically have hotels with 35-60 rooms range,” Samir said.
Once its upcoming pipeline is operational, O by Tamara is expected to account for 40-45% of its total room inventory due to its larger key count per property, with The Tamara resorts and Lilac contributing roughly 30% each.
Revenue will be skewed towards O by Tamara given its higher room inventory and larger banqueting and food and beverage operations. The Tamara resorts, despite lower key counts, command average daily rates of ₹30,000 and above, depending on season and market.
"Our aspiration is to definitely go more than 2X of what we are at this stage. And in our leisure portfolio, we try not to go beyond the 50-60 room bracket even when we have the land to build more," the CEO said. All existing and pipeline-owned assets are funded through internal capital, he added.
Scope for growth
India’s branded hotel supply remains relatively small compared with the size of its travel market. There were only about 209,200 branded hotel rooms across nearly 2,300 properties in India in the first half of 2025.
This is expected to expand to around 350,400 rooms by 2030, according to a report by HVS Anarock and Gleads Consulting titled ‘2025 Hotel Development Cost in India’.
- Tamara Hospitality plans to invest ₹480-540 crore to double its hotel footprint over the next three to five years.
- The growth strategy includes both owned developments and an asset-light model through management and franchising.
- The Indian hotel market is on track to grow significantly, with a projected increase in branded hotel supply by 2030.
The hotel development pipeline is increasingly skewed towards the midscale segment, which accounts for 37% of existing branded supply and about 39% of upcoming rooms, reflecting strong domestic demand for moderate-priced hotels.
Industry fundamentals have also improved, with average room rates and revenue per available room rising about 5% annually since 2017 and national occupancy stabilising in the low-60% range. At the same time, development costs have risen 8-12% year-on-year, with midscale hotel construction costing up to about ₹69 lakh per room, pushing developers to carefully manage capital deployment even as expansion spreads into tier-2 and tier-3 cities where land costs are lower.