Silverlink Bags Lodhi Hotel For Rs 70 Crore

The Oberois of East India Hotels (EIH) will finally have tough competition on their home turf with the Singapore-based Silverlink Holdings, which owns the Aman group of luxury hotels, making its debut in India by bagging the India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC)-owned Lodhi hotel in Delhi. The company has bagged the hotel, which was put on the block in the second tranche, for around Rs 70 crore.

Silverlink holdings, which is promoted by Adrian Zecha and Shroeders, has 12 luxury properties comprising 430 rooms spread across Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.

While the second highest bid for ITDC Lodhi belonging to the Leela group of hotels was for about Rs 60 crore, the third-highest bid belonged to the Lalit Suri of Bharat Hotels. The reserve price for the property is expected to be about Rs 45 crore. The other bidders included Pankaj Munjal of the Hero Honda group in consortium with Radisson Hotels but the bid was rejected because it was not accompanied by a bank guarantee. The Nepal-based Chaudhary group, which holds a stake in the Taj Asia venture, was also expected to make a bid but it did not turn up at the last moment, sources said.

 

Sources said the final bid was considerably higher because of the intense competition for the hotel. While the total investment that Silverlink Holdings will make in the hotel property has not been finalised, it would be a five star deluxe property.

There was, however, only one bid for Ranjit hotel from the Sarafs of Unison Hotels which was rejected because it was below the reserve price, sources said. Unison Hotels managing director Umesh Saraf said while the company was looking at the property earlier and had qualified all the previous rounds, it decided not to make a financial bid.

With the second tranche of the ITDC hotel divestment coming to an end today, the government has managed to sell three hotels including Qutab and Lodhi in Delhi and Lakshmi Vilas at Udaipur. It has thus added about Rs 115-120 crore to its kitty compared to Rs 60 crore in the first round.

While Qutab has been bagged by Sushil Gupta of the Asian Hotels at Rs 35.5 crore, Lalit Suri has bought the Udaipur property for Rs 8-9 crore. Interestingly, HSBC along with HVS International were the advisors for both the Delhi properties.

Since there were no valid bids for Ashok Delhi, Janpath, Ranjit, Varanasi hotel, Kanishka and Indraprastha hotel, the government is likely to put the hotels on the block again in the next round, sources said. Even Samrat would be offered to bidders in the third round of ITDC's divestment, sources said.