Indian Hotels to set up budget hotels across India
The Financial Express — March 22, 2006

Indian Hotels Company Ltd on Tuesday said it will invest Rs 100 crore in the next fiscal to set up budget hotels across the country and bid for Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation's (IRCTC) tender for operating hotels. "We will be offering one new hotel for every six weeks in the next one year," Indian Hotels Company Ltd managing director and CEO Raymond Bickson told reporters here, while announcing the renaming of its smart basics hotels project, earlier known as 'Indione' to 'Ginger'.

Mr Bickson said the investment, excluding land costs, for a hotel having 100 rooms would be about Rs 10 crore. By the end of 2006 Ginger hotels would be opened in Bhubaneswar, Pune, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram, Durgapur and Goa. Work would also commence on hotels in Agartala, Tirupur, Pondicherry and Nasik within the next couple of months, he added. On the bids to partner IRCTC in operating budget hotels, in which railways will provide land, Mr Bickson said, "we have a keen interest in it and are closely looking at it".

He also said the hospitality major would launch service apartments projects in cities like Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. On the possibility of taking the Ginger brand overseas, he said, "there has been great interest from emerging markets like China, South Africa and neighbouring countries. We will definitely consider that option once we establish ourselves in the domestic market".