The Hindu Business Line : Indian Hotels doubling room count to 13,000

Mumbai June 13 The Indian Hotels Company Ltd, which operates the Taj group of hotels and resorts, would be doubling its existing room count from 6,500 to around 13,000 rooms in the country. Its Vice-President Mr Sumit Guha said the capacity expansion would happen in the next five to six years. Agency reports said that this would entail a cost of over Rs 1,000 crore.

The company is specifically expanding its room count in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi, Mr Guha said, speaking on the sidelines of a conference being held by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.

Some of the hotels would be ownership projects, some of them joint venture projects, while others would be through management contracts.

In Bangalore, the company is looking at 1,000 additional rooms through four upcoming properties.

The Whitefield project would be completed in the first quarter of year 2008 and the Yashvantpur project by the end of the same year. Another project at Bannerghata would be completed in three years, while land for the Devanahalli project has been finalised.

Talking of Mumbai, where the group has three properties, he said the city has potential for seven more. The group is currently looking at one property in the Navi Mumbai area.

In the National Capital Region, land has been finalised for a `premium brand' hotel in Noida along the Greater Noida Expressway. Another project in Gurgaon is coming up under `management contract' with a real estate developer.

"An expression of interest has been submitted for a hotel in the Delhi Airport premises. So we would be looking at either that or a property in the Dwarka area in the near future," added Mr Guha.

On the international plans for the group, Doha, the Maldives, Mauritius, Colombo, Dubai, Cape Town, Johannesburg, San Francisco, New York, Sydney, Boston, Phuket, Langkawi (Malaysia) and Thimpu are on the radar, he said.

Here too the projects could be through joint ventures, management contracts or on ownership basis.

Commenting on the new approaches for developing hotel properties, Mr Guha said: "Ideally we would like to own the property, but given the high price of land in major cities, we have to settle for management contracts."

Mr Guha said he also foresees a faster correction in the prices of rooms in Bangalore and Hyderabad given the increase in the supply expected in next four years in these cities. "In Mumbai and Delhi it will be comparatively slower, around five to six years," he added.