The 'Golden Tulip' chain of hotels, in association with food and beverage brand Shiraz Hotel Pvt Ltd, came together to announce the opening of their first hotel in eastern India- 'Tulip Inn-Kolkata' -here on Tuesday.

V J Singh, Managing Director, Louvre Hotels & Golden Tulip South Asia and Ishtiaque Ahmed, Director, Shiraz Hotels Pvt. Ltd were present at the occasion.

Singh said, "We are investing in India and we have invested in 4-5 companies. In the next 10 months we are looking forward to 24 new hotels."

"When the values are down, it is good to invest and our investments are mainly in budget and economic segments.We are looking for joint and regional ventures," he said.

Talking about the investments, Singh said, "We have already invested $50 million and in the next 12 months we will invest around $200 million."

In West Bengal, Golden Tulip said they are looking for budget hotels in Durgapur and Asansol.
Ahmed said, "The initial investment for this project is around 15 crores excluding land and after this project, we may go to Darjeeling."

On being asked about the reason for the tie-up, Ahmed said, "We are related to restaurant industry only and are very new to hotel business. So we tied up with Tulip to make our work easy as they are very flexible."

Tulip Inn-Kolkata has three restaurants under one roof- The Park Pavillion, Dawaat-E-Shiraz and Rio Cafe as per an IBNS report by Priyam Mallick.