Tata group plans to open 30 more Gateway Hotels by 2015

The Tata group-promoted Indian Hotels Company (IHC) is planning to open 30 more hotels of its mid-segment premium brand 'The Gateway Hotel' chain by 2015, a senior company official said.

Presently, there are 20 Gateway Hotels across the country. "This is our upscale chain. We are planning to open 13 hotels by 2012 and then scale-up operations to 50 by 2015 across the country," Gateway Hotel's Director (Operations), Monica Lakhmana, told PTI on the sidelines of a conference here.

The Gateway Hotels are positioned above IHCL's economy brand `Ginger' and below the Residency and Taj brands and would cater to a pan-India network of hotels and resorts offering all key services at competitive prices.

"We are looking at Tier II and other smaller cities as they are growing and also plan to expand in places that attract more tourists," she said. Of the 20 hotels under this brand, 16 hotels belong to IHCL and were rechristened as Gateway Hotel. However, the other four were new constructions.   

On the investment part, Lakhmana said the new hotels would be run on the management contract model in which private developers would invest and build hotels on Gateway's prototype and brand; later IHCL would purchase the same from them.

However, she refused to divulge the revenue-sharing pattern. Gateway is present in Agra, Bangalore, Calicut, Chikmagalur, Coonoor, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Madurai, Mangalore, Nasik, Sasan Gir, Surat, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada, Vishakhapatnam and Jodhpur. Two more will come up at Chennai and New Delhi in June next year. Jalandhar, Mysore, Navi Mumbai, Raipur and Gondia are the next destinations in the pipeline.