Covid blues over? Hotel tariffs in Delhi, Mumbai overtake Rishikesh, Ranthambore for 1st time post pandemic

NEW DELHI: For the first time since Covid, the leisure and spiritual destinations — Ranthambore and Rishikesh — have been overtaken by Mumbai and Delhi as the Indian cities with highest average hotel tariffs. Leading hospitality consulting firm Hotelivate’s recently released trends & opportunities report for 2026 shows average revenue per available room (RevPAR) for Delhi at Rs 9,811; Mumbai Rs 9,761; Ranthambore Rs 9,649 and Rishikesh Rs 9,583 in FY 2025-26. In the previous fiscal, the top four positions were Ranthambore (Rs 0,059), Rishikesh (Rs 9,493), Mumbai (Rs 9,458) and Delhi (Rs 8,846). This shows a revival in corporate travel, international visitation and the group-oriented Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, and Exhibitions (MICE) activity.Varanasi has shown a big jump in average tariffs with the holy city boasting of the fifth highest rates at Rs 8,857 — ahead of Udaipur (Rs 8,414) and Goa (Rs 7,614) — in FY 26, up from the ninth spot in previous fiscal when its RevPAR was Rs 6,769.(function(){function e(){window.addEventListener(`message`,function(e){if(e.data[`datawrapper-height`]!==void 0){var t=document.querySelectorAll(`iframe`);for(var n in e.data[`datawrapper-height`])for(var r=0,i;i=t[r];r++)if(i.contentWindow===e.source){var a=e.data[`datawrapper-height`][n]+`px`;i.style.height=a}}})}e()})();The deadly Pahalgam terror attack last April saw Srinagar register its biggest fall in visitors. “Srinagar recorded the sharpest decline across the dataset, with RevPAR falling 51.9% year-on-year (to Rs 3,323 in FY 26) and the market moving from among the country’s leading performers to the bottom 15. Jalandhar, Jammu and Amritsar faced similar pressures, as cancellations associated with Operation Sindoor weakened demand across markets closer to the border,” says the report.“In recent years, leisure destinations, particularly emerging markets with limited supply and demand from destination weddings, (had) risen sharply in the national rankings. In 2025/26, however, Delhi and Mumbai emerged as the country’s leading RevPAR markets.… Leisure destinations such as Ranthambore, Rishikesh and Udaipur nevertheless remained among the top performers,” says the report.“The gap at the top also narrowed considerably, with less than Rs 250 separating the four leading markets, compared with a much wider spread in the previous year. Strong performance in these leisure destinations has attracted additional midmarket and upper midmarket supply, resulting in some normalisation in market-wide rates without displacing them from the country’s leading RevPAR markets,” it added.At the end of March 2026, India had a pipeline of 1.6 lakh hotel rooms to open in next five years. This was a 41% jump from the pipeline of 1.1 lakh exactly a year ago. “The pipeline is now approaching the scale of the country’s existing branded inventory. If it materialises in full, India’s branded hotel inventory would increase by 77% to approximately 3.7 lakh rooms. The top five markets are likely to be relatively unchanged with one exception; Jaipur is likely to surpass Chennai to become the fifth largest market in the country by operating inventory. However, not all of this supply is expected to materialise,” it said.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.