Kolkata: The Tata group’s Indian Hotels Company, which operates the Taj group of hotels, is aggressively looking at acquisition targets and has zeroed in on diverse markets like China and the United States.

"There is a compelling case for going overseas. Countries like the United States and China are some of the markets we are seriously considering. We are particularly interested in the Chinese market which, we believe, would be a dominant player in the global hospitality industry within the next seven years," Indian Hotels managing director R.K. Krishna Kumar said.

"We are targeting both individual stand-alone properties as well as hotel chains for acquisition," he added.

Indian Hotels currently has 16 overseas properties, and apart from the St James Hotel in United Kingdom, most of the properties are in neighbouring countries and the Middle East.

Indian Hotels is now going through a renovation, repositioning and a major portfolio-restructuring exercise. As a part of this initiative, the Taj brand is being re-defined and will now be restricted only to premium hotel properties like palaces and super deluxe luxury hotels, Mr Krishna Kumar added. Other hotels like the budget hotels will be assigned some other brand name.

"The restructuring also includes pruning the large number of non-performing subsidiaries. We have close to 57 subsidiaries and the number will be brought down to 30 within the next few years," he said.

"We expect a reasonably normal second half in the current financial year. Foreign business travellers have started coming back to the country while the foreign tourists are yet to return since the travel advisory was lifted," Mr Krishna Kumar said.

"To counter this, we are now focusing on the domestic tourist segment and revamping our restaurants under the food and beverage business. We expect the occupancy to rise to 70 per cent when the season starts in October," he informed.