Ginger hotels, the buget hotels from Root Corp Ltd (RCL) plans to add another 35-40 hotels to its current tally of 10 hotels in three years.
Budget hotels firm plans Rs 400 crore spend in 3-5 years
MUMBAI: Ginger hotels, the buget hotels from Root Corp Ltd (RCL) — a wholly owned subsidiary of Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL) — plans to add another 35-40 hotels to its current tally of 10 hotels in three years.
Although company officials refused to give any time frame, Anil Goel, senior vice- president, finance, IHCL, and director, RCL, said on the sidelines of a press meet to announce the launch of hotel’s 10th property in Puducherry:
“We have already acquired land for 35-40 properties and construction activities would start soon.”
The company will launch a hotel in Vadodora next week and three hotels in Ludhiana, Pantnagar, Panaji will get operational by March 2008.
Meanwhile, a refurbished Rail Yatri Niwas, a public-private partnership with Indian railways, will also be ready by March 2008.
Prabhat Pani, CEO and director, RCL, said on the occasion: “We have already invested Rs 220 crore till now to fund expansion. Rs 12-14 crore is needed to construct a 100-room Ginger hotel. We have so far made a commitment of Rs 60-80 crore for starting the construction work for future projects.”
The company will need an investment of more than Rs 400 crore to fund its expansion in 3-5 years.
Launched in Bangalore’s Whitefield area in 2003 under the “indione” brand, the smart basic hotel concept was in 2006 re-branded Ginger as part of the fine-tuning exercise undertaken by RCL. The company opened its second property in April 2006 and have since then added 9 more properties.
“Ginger hotels have opened 9 of its hotels in the past 20 months, roughly 1 hotel every 8 weeks. Going forward, we aim to further increase the pace of our rollout,” Goel said on the occasion of the launch.
“Besides developing greenfield hotels, we have started exploring other options like mall developments, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and management contracts with existing property owners among others,” said Pani.
The Ginger’s first mall-o-tel (hotel in the mall) will get operational in March in The Souk mall in Ludhiana. The company has also tied up with Ansal developers for mall-o-tels in Mohali and Amritsar, and with Himalayas developers in Ahmedabad.
The company is close to finalising sites in Mumbai, chennai and Kolkata and preparatory work has also commenced for Ginger Hotels in Mangalore, Guwahati, Jamshedpur and Paradip in Orissa.
“As per the ministry of tourism data, there is a demand of 88,000 hotel rooms below three-star category for this year but only 80,000 are available. Also, there is no organised chain in this category. We intend to fill this gap and be an ideal replacement for guest houses and service apartments too,” said Pani.
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