The gap in the market

Hospitality advisory in the region has historically been delivered in fragments. Consulting firms usually handled feasibility and strategy, while brokerage firms handled transactions. Global real estate platforms had hospitality desks, but rarely the depth of sector knowledge that owners and investors increasingly demanded. The result was an ecosystem of specialists—excellent within their lanes but rarely able to accompany a client across the full arc of an asset's life, from land acquisition and concept strategy to operator selection, capital structuring, transaction and long-term asset management.

It is precisely this gap that Hotelivate was founded to fill. Established in 2017 by Manav Thadani, Megha Tuli and Achin Khanna, the firm set out with a clear conviction: that hospitality advisory in South Asia deserved a platform built entirely around sector depth, relationships and a genuine understanding of how hotels work, both as businesses and assets.

Eight years later, that conviction has been validated by the market in the most tangible way possible. Savills, one of the world's leading international property consultants, has acquired a significant stake in Hotelivate, forming Hotelivate-Savills, a scaled, institutional hospitality advisory platform with offices across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Dubai and Jakarta, and access to Savills' network spanning more than 70 countries.

Why now?

The timing is perfect. Savills has spent the past decade building its India platform to a scale that makes selective, strategic investment in specialist capabilities both possible and necessary. Hospitality, given the sector's trajectory across the region, was a natural focus. The question was not whether to move, but who to move with.

For Anurag Mathur, CEO of Savills India, “This marks an important step in the evolution of Savills in India. Eight years into our journey, we have reached the scale and organisational maturity to invest selectively in specialist capabilities aligned with where the market is heading. Hotelivate stood out not just for the quality of its advisory work, but for what the firm represents—deep sector expertise, strong relationships and the trust it has built across the industry.”

On the timing of the move, Mathur is equally clear: “The tailwinds across South Asia’s hospitality sector are both real and structural. As domestic travel grows, international tourism rebounds, and institutional investor interest deepens, the need for more integrated advisory becomes increasingly evident. This investment allows us to strengthen our offering and deliver more cohesive, end-to-end solutions to clients across the region.”

What Hotelivate built

To understand what Hotelivate-Savills represents, it is imperative to understand what Hotelivate built in the eight years before this moment.

The firm's advisory work spans the full hospitality lifecycle—strategy, feasibility, operator selection, asset management, transaction advisory and executive search. Its client base includes some of the region's most significant owners, developers and institutional investors. But perhaps more than any single mandate, what defined Hotelivate's standing in the industry was its role as a convener.

HICSA, or the Hotel Investment Conference South Asia, has become the most influential gathering of hospitality capital in the region. THINC, its counterpart across Dubai, Bali and Sri Lanka, has extended that community across the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Together, these platforms gave Hotelivate something that no advisory firm could manufacture: a position at the centre of the industry's conversation.

For Manav Thadani, Founder and Chairman of Hotelivate, this context matters enormously when he describes what the Savills investment means."We didn't build Hotelivate to sell it. We built it because we believed this industry needed a platform with genuine depth and genuine relationships—one that could sit with a client at the beginning of a project and still be relevant at every stage that followed. What Savills brings is the ability to do that at a scale and with a reach that we simply couldn't access alone."

Asked what he is most protective of as the firm enters this new chapter, Thadani doesn't hesitate: "Our point of view. The willingness to tell a client what we actually think, not what they want to hear. That is what people come to us for. That stays."

The road ahead

As real estate and hospitality continue to converge, in capital, in development strategy, and in the expectations of a new generation of institutional investors, the case for what Hotelivate-Savills represents only grows stronger.

The markets it serves are, by any measure, at the beginning of something significant. Branded supply is expanding at a pace not seen before. Capital is arriving from directions—sovereign funds, family offices, global private equity—that would have seemed unlikely a decade ago. And the appetite shows no sign of slowing.

Hotelivate spent eight years building the platform and the relationships to be at the centre of that story. With Savills behind it, it now has the scale to match the moment.

(Hotelivate-Savills operates across Delhi, Mumbai, Bangkok, Dubai and Jakarta. For more information, visit hotelivate.com)