After 'no frills' airlines, it's now the turn of 'no frills' branded hotels costing Rs 1,000 a night. No bell hop, no valet service, no one to tip, but certainly a flat screen TV, Internet connectivity, tea / coffee maker in the room and of course a self-controlled AC.

Roots Corporation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Tatas' Indian Hotels Company, has planned a major foray in the eastern region, including the north east, through its "Ginger'' brand of affordable hotels for the business traveller.

The first such 101-room 'Smart Basics' hotel in West Bengal will be opened in Durgapur on Wednesday by the state chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This will be its second location in eastern India, after Bhubaneswar in 2006. The hotel in Durgapur is the latest addition to the growing chain of Ginger hotels across the country, which includes Bangalore (its first hotel location), Haridwar, Bhubaneswar, Mysore, Thiruvananthapuram and Pune.

Expansion plans
Briefing newspersons here on Tuesday on the company's expansion plans, Prabhat Pani, CEO, Roots Corporation, said the company has signed an MoU with Bengal Pragati Infrastructure, one of the joint venture companies of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, for a hotel project in New Town, Rajarhat, and other 3-tier city locations in Bengal such as Haldia and Kharagpur and Siliguri in North Bengal.

All these will be 101-room hotels in the Smart Basics category, each entailing an investment of Rs 10-11 crore, excluding the cost of land. He put land requirement for the Ginger hotels at a little below one acre. The company is also looking at a slightly larger format (150 rooms), like the project coming up at Goa.

Pani said about 8 hotels are now under construction, and the plan is to complete about 25 properties by end 2008. Work on Ginger hotels in Goa, Puducherry and Agartala has already commenced, and the plan is to start work on other hotels in Pantnagar, Vadodara, Tirupur, Guwahati, Nashik, Ludhiana, Jamshedpur, New Delhi, Mangalore, Paradip and Ahmedabad within the next couple of months.

He said the plan is to tap niche markets and target customers looking for a branded product at a viable price, making it a profitable proposition for the business traveller. "We have created a new category in the domestic hospitality landscape, while giving a major fillip to Indian tourism and other ancillary industries. Room tariff is pegged at Rs 999 for a single and Rs 1,199 for a double, plus taxes,'' Pani said.