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The Wadhawan group is planning to set up nine hotels, in four and five-star categories, at an investment of Rs 1,000 crore in the next five years, according to Kapil Wadhawan, chairman of Wadhawan Holdings, the holding company of the group.
Of the total outlay, 60 to 70 per cent will be funded through debt. The 1984-founded group has tied up with hospitality chain Minor International to run its hotels. The first of its two hotels, in Mysore and Pune, will be up and running in the next two quarters, Wadhawan said.
The rest of the hotels will come up in Wayanad in Kerala, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Udaipur in Rajasthan, besides Tamil Nadu’s capital city of Chennai. That southern metropolis will carry a brand of Anantara Resort & Spa, while the Wayanad hotel will have the brand of Naladu.
“We will not be in a hurry,” said Wadhawan. “We will launch them slowly...at an appropriate time. The plan is that all nine hotels will be up and running five years from now.” Wadhawan is not alone. About 15 companies, some of them new, are planning to set up 600-odd hotels in India to tap the demand from business and leisure travellers.
According to estimates, Shanghai, the second biggest city in China, has more organised rooms to offer than the whole Indian market, which is struggling at little over 100,000 rooms.
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