Ginger plans three more hotels in Orissa

Sensing opportunities for budget hotels, Tata Group promoted Roots Corporation Ltd (RCL) proposes to three more Ginger hotels in the state. These hotels will come up in industrial towns of Kalinga Nagar, Paradip and Jharsuguda.

“Places like Kalinga Nagar, Paradip and Jharsuguda are now bustling with business which was not there five years ago. As Ginger hotels draw most of their revenue from business travels, we are planning to open three hotels at these places,” said Prabhat Pani, chief executive officer (CEO) of RCL.

He said, the proposed no-frills hotels will have 70 to 75 rooms each with basic facilities in line with the 'help yourselves tagline' of Ginger hotels.

“A person who comes on business travel will not spend time in swimming pool or in a health club. He just needs a clean bed and hygienic food after his busy day. We are providing just that,” Pani explained.

However, he refused to give a timeline for these hotels saying the idea of setting up the hotels was in nascent stage and land acquisition for the projects has not been completed yet.

Ginger hotels chain offers low-cost rooms starting from Rs 1,000 per night in many cities in India.

Ginger group currently has 24 hotels in cities like Agartala, Ahmadabad, Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Durgapur, Durg, Goa, Pune, Mangalore, Thiruvananthapuram, Guwahati, Haridwar, Jamshedpur, Ludhiana, Mysore, Nasik, New Delhi, Pandtnagar, Puducherry and Vadodara.

Pani hinted at opening more hotels across India in the wake of rapid urbanization.

“The rapid industrialization and economic growth have thrown up new cities and towns in recent years such as Pantnagar in Uttarakhand and Sriperumbudur in Tamil Nadu. We would like to have Ginger hotels in all such new towns including in two metros where we do not have any presence, that is, Mumbai and Kolkata,” he said.

Ginger Group plans to set up 50 new hotels in India by the end of 2015, Pani said.

“I cannot give the investment figures as land cost varies from city to city. I can only say that in a 100 room hotel, we spend somewhere between Rs 10 to Rs 15 crore,” he said.

He said, the company is looking at various options such as buying properties, leasing or entering into management contract to expand its business.