Abu Dhabi based Rotana Hotels aims to manage 20 hotels in India. As yet, the company manages hotels only in the Middle East and North Africa, with properties spanning across the Gulf region, and countries including Iraq, Sudan, and Egypt.

"We have signed up agreements in almost every major city of the Middle East," said Selim El Zyr, the president and chief executive of Rotana Hotels. "We are almost everywhere in North Africa. So it is natural to keep on expanding. We cannot stop there. We cannot grow any more if we don't look outside of where we are."

India, where Rotana hopes to be managing 20 hotels within a decade, is a logical step for a number of reasons, he said. It is a market on the doorstep of the UAE that is in need of more hotels as travel within and to the country booms, and because of the close ties and large Indian expatriate community in the UAE as per a report in The national by Rebecca Bundhun.

Travel and tourism directly contributed 1.68trillion rupees (Dh120.43 billion) to India's economy last year, and that is forecast to rise by 7.6 per cent this year, and to reach 3.8tn rupees in 2022, according to figures from the World Travel and Tourism Council.

"India is not a foreign country to us," said Mr El Zyr. "We are so close, we know the culture, we know many people. We have a huge amount of staff that are with us that would like to relocate to India."

There are other areas where the operator is hoping to open hotels, he said. "India, we have taken the step and we have somebody there. We are looking at many other markets. We are looking at Africa, CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries in Central Europe, Turkey," Mr El Zyr said.

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