Ginger Hotels, a subsidiary of the Indian Hotels company, is eyeing standalone and family-run hotels to scale up its room inventory.

“At the lower end of the mid-market, fast growth is happening. We are finding it hard to go for greenfield projects at the moment, because high land costs and procurement of licences have become time-consuming and difficult,” P.K. Mohankumar, Managing Director and CEO, Roots Corporation, told Business Line.

“Keeping this development in mind, we are tweaking our business plan to accommodate the franchise, brownfield and management contract routes for expansion,” he added.

The current room inventory of the hotel group is around 2,500 rooms from 27 properties across the country. Ginger Hotels is planning to take the total to 50 hotels by 2015 and double its room inventory.

To scale up, the company is exploring opportunities by picking up standalone properties and family-run businesses. “We have identified a few in tier II and III cities and talks are at a preliminary stage,” he said, without identifying the place or the hotel groups.

“As per our reworked business plan, we want to be in every district in major States where a good amount of development is happening,” said Mohankumar.

Ginger Hotels is achieving 70 per cent occupancy and, at a few properties in the major metros, this is crossing 80-90 per cent.

“Majority of the customers are still individual corporate travellers. About 30-40 per cent are repeat customers,” said P.V. Kiran, Head-Sales and Marketing, Roots Corporation.

"At our leisure destinations — Mysore, Pondicherry and Goa — occupancy has been extremely good,” he added.

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