ITC Hotels is a hospitality company that owns and manages hotels, primarily in India, serving business and leisure travellers. It was originally part of the ITC conglomerate and was demerged into a separate listed entity, with its shares listed on the stock exchanges in January 2025, the same year it celebrated 50 years of operations and grew from a single hotel into a chain with over 140 properties. The recurring approach that explains everything else is an “Asset-Right” strategy - balancing hotels it owns with those it manages or franchises for others - which lets it grow faster and with less capital than a pure owner-operator would need.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a portfolio of owned trophy hotels that also sells luxury apartments, a fast-growing managed-and-franchised business that collects fees on other people’s properties, and a food-and-beverage capability so deep it is almost a business in its own right.
1. Owned hotels and real estate: the asset base that built the brand
These are the flagship properties the company owns outright, where it earns money from every room, every meal and every event - and, in Colombo, from selling luxury apartments in the same building.
- The trophy portfolio sets the pricing benchmark - the owned hotels command a RevPAR (revenue per available room) premium of 37% over the industry in India’s luxury and upscale segment, with city-level outperformance ranging from 15% in Kolkata to 75% in Hyderabad. That premium is what makes the brand valuable enough for other owners to pay management fees to use it.
- Owned, but shifting toward asset-light - as of March 2026, owned keys were 39% of the total operating portfolio, with a stated target to bring that down to 33% by 2031 as the company scales to 250 hotels, meaning most future growth will come from managed properties rather than owned ones.
- Real estate is a side bet that pays out in chunks - the Colombo property, ITC Ratnadipa, includes Sapphire Residences, luxury apartments designed by Philippe Starck’s firm, which began progressive handover in FY26. This is not a recurring hotel revenue stream but a one-off development profit that sits alongside the hotel operations.
- New owned projects are still being built, selectively - a 200-key hotel in Visakhapatnam and a premium hotel at the Yashobhoomi Complex in New Delhi were announced in FY26, while smaller owned hotels in Puri and Bhubaneswar are under construction for completion by 2027. The company also signed definitive agreements to acquire its first owned resort in Kerala in May 2026, a 72-key property on 18 acres with a man-made lagoon, to be renovated and rebranded.
2. Managed and franchised hotels: the growth engine that needs little capital
The company operates hotels for other owners under its brand names, collecting a management fee - so it adds rooms and revenue without buying buildings.
- The portfolio is already larger than the owned one - managed operating keys stood at 8,651 as of March 2026, or 61% of the total, and when the pipeline of signed-but-unopened hotels is included, the managed portfolio exceeds 15,000 keys.
- Signings are accelerating - in FY26 alone, the company signed 33 hotels with over 3,300 keys, its highest ever, and over the two years FY25-FY26 it signed 63 hotels and opened 28, a pace of more than one opening per month.
- Management fees grow as properties stabilise - fee income rose 28% year-on-year in FY26, driven by new openings and the full-year contribution of previously commissioned hotels, though fees still represented only 4.4% of consolidated ex-real-estate revenue, indicating how early-stage this engine is relative to the owned portfolio.
- The pipeline reaches where the owned portfolio does not - expansion is focused on Tier-II and Tier-III cities, emerging business hubs, leisure destinations and spiritual locations, places where owning a hotel might not make sense but where a local developer will build one if the brand and operator are strong enough.
3. Food and beverage: the brand’s other half
Restaurants and banqueting are not an amenity here - they are a revenue stream that brings in nearly two-fifths of the company’s ex-real-estate income, built on a stable of signature restaurant brands with decades of recognition.
- A revenue contributor, not a cost centre - food and beverage contributed 39.1% of consolidated ex-real-estate revenue in FY26, led by banqueting, weddings and corporate events. In a typical hotel company, F&B is a service that supports room sales; here it is a standalone draw.
- Iconic restaurants create their own demand - Bukhara has served a menu unchanged since 1978, Dum Pukht specialises in Awadhi cuisine, and Avartana, the progressive Southern Indian restaurant, made its international debut with a pop-up in France in 2025. These are brands that guests book independently of their hotel stay.
- The banquet business rides India’s wedding and events economy - the MICE and weddings segment accounts for 22% of owned-hotel room revenue, and the company added 8,400 square feet of banquet space at its Sheraton New Delhi property in FY26, signalling where it sees incremental demand.
Group structure and partners
The company was carved out of a conglomerate and still leans on it, while building its own subsidiary network in Sri Lanka and adding acquired properties through wholly owned subsidiaries.
- ITC Limited remains the promoter after the demerger and listing in January 2025, and the company has extensive related-party arrangements with ITC group entities for IT support, travel services, internal audit and business support.
- The international beachhead is a wholly owned subsidiary in Sri Lanka - WelcomHotels Lanka (Private) Limited operates ITC Ratnadipa in Colombo and the Sapphire Residences project, and turned EBITDA positive in its first full year of operation in FY26.
- Acquisitions are routed through subsidiaries - in May 2026, the company acquired 100% of Zuri Hotels and Resorts Private Limited, making it a wholly owned subsidiary and adding the Kerala resort to the owned portfolio.
- Heritage properties run through a joint venture - Maharaja Heritage Resorts Limited, a JV with Jodhana Heritage Resorts Private Limited, operates 34 properties with roughly 1,000 keys under the WelcomHeritage brand.