Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me Simon Calder. It's Friday the 7th of June and I am delighted to be back in the excellent company of Dilip Rajakaria. He is of course the chief executive of minor hotels. And if you're wondering who minor hotels are,

well they are pretty major. They own all kinds of brands including Anantara, including

NH hotels and most recently the, more recently the Woolsey Hospitality Group. And very happily,

I'm sitting in the Woolsey in Central London which you

may know if you don't get here soon and I think I'm going about going to get a cup of tea in the

middle of this as well but let's see how are you doing I'm very good Simon and thanks very

much for having me today give us a roundup of your extraordinary business and tell me how you

managed to get any sleep at all. I think post-COVID, you know, we did suffer during

COVID as did the whole travel and tourism industry. But post-COVID, we actually came up with back to growth and we've been

growing quite strongly in all countries, whether it's Europe, whether it's the Middle East, Africa,

Australia and Asia as well. And last year, as you know, we announced our best year ever, so surpassing 2019 and the best year

in the history of miner. And this year, we are trending ahead of last year, which means it's

going to be another bumper year for us this year. Of course, different parts of the world must be performing

in different ways. Where is doing particularly well and where might things be a bit sluggish and possibly

I guess people get an even better deal? Yeah, I think for us today Europe is trending very strong ahead of last year and and way ahead of ever in the history of Europe, the hotels in Europe.

Asia is starting to trend up and where it's a little bit slow, we see travel a bit slow is China

and because of what's happening in China, but I think we strongly believe that China will come back quite strong as well in the future.

India as a country, the outbound market is trending very, very strong. So the Chinese tourists we miss

in Asia is well surpassed by India, well surpassed by Middle East and other countries like Japan, Taiwan,

and of course Europe and the traditional countries as well.

So for us, and Maldives was a little bit soft early this year, but now it's starting to trend stronger than prior years as well.

So yeah, so I think the stars have been Europe and Asia.

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