Viceroy Hotels plans to invest Rs 1000 crore

Launches budget hotel ‘Courtyard by Marriott’ in Hyderabad.

Hyderabad-based hospitality player, Viceroy Hotels Limited, will be investing Rs 1,000 crore in setting up star and budget hotel properties across the country by the end of next year.

“We are planning to raise Rs 150 crore through private equity placement (PE) in the next six months to part fund the expansion,” P Prabhakar Reddy, chairman and managing director of Viceroy Hotels, told mediapersons here on Friday.

The company, which operates the Marriott hotel and restaurant and bakery chains under ‘Blue Fox’, ‘Minerva’ and ‘Break Talk’ in Hyderabad, had raised Rs 150 crore through PE placement last year. The promoter holding in Viceroy Hotels currently stands at 33 per cent. Reddy, however, declined to divulge the extent of dilution of the promoters’ stake after the new funds are raised.

The company intends to open four budget hotels under the ‘Courtyard by Marriott’ brand – one each in Chennai and Mumbai and two in Pune -- , a JW Marriott hotel in Chennai and a Renaissance hotel in Bangalore by the end of next year. These will be managed by US-based Marriott International Group.

“The 382-room seven-star property at Chennai involves an investment of Rs 620 crore, while the Rs 311-crore Bangalore project will comprise 300 rooms. These projects will be funded through 65 per cent bank loans and the rest by promoters,” Reddy said, adding the company plans to expand its food and beverage restaurants business to Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai in the next two to three years.

The company today opened its ‘Courtyard by Marriott’ budget hotel here, the third such property in India with the other two being in Gurgaon and Ahmedabad. The hotel comprises 161 guest rooms, taking the company’s total room strength in Hyderabad to 500.

Viceroy Hotels expects to clock revenues of Rs 90 crore this year, as against Rs 100 crore last year, on account of the economic downturn. With the Courtyard by Marriott in place, the company expects to garner Rs 120 crore revenues from both the hotels in Hyderabad next year, Reddy said.

“We are aiming at having 1,400 rooms and a turnover of Rs 500 crore by 2012,” he added.