I think it is highly improbable that they will demerge hotels.
The shareholder-friendly way to go is to spin it off to shareholders; listing a minority stake only fructifies the Holdco/conglomerate discount and doesn’t do much for shareholders.
Once you start doing that (spinoffs – which are great for shareholders) and you open the can of worms, there will be pressure to unwind the entire conglomerate effectively and management will lose control of this mega-cap giant.
This will be great for shareholders, assuming the businesses are at a level of maturity where they don’t depend on tobacco cashflows. However, I don’t think it will happen – they’ve been talking about this for 2 years. If I were to demerge hotels – this is probably the best time to, with EIH and Indian Hotels up > 60% over the last 1Y.
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