Budget hotel Ginger plans to scale up its properties by tying up with non-branded family-run hotels and even managing company-owned guest houses.
The company opened its 28{+t}{+h} hotel at Noida on Monday and expects the number to increase to 70 in the next three years. The Noida hotel has 83 rooms and is the company’s fifth hotel in the Delhi-NCR region.
P. K. Mohankumar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Roots Corporation,said that though the company initially focused on building its own hotels, it now wants to focus on scaling up faster. Roots Corporation is a subsidiary of Indian Hotels that runs Ginger hotels.
“We are looking at family-owned non-branded hotels that might be facing difficulties in operating and are looking for tie-ups. We could also look at a large number of uncompleted projects by putting in our equity, besides management contracts with builders as well as lease opportunities,” he said. The company is also looking to tie up with corporates such as IT companies to manage their guest houses.
The company plans to ramp up inventory in the five key cities — Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad. “We believe each of these cities have the potential for nearly 20 Ginger hotels,” he said.
He said though the eventual growth will happen in tier 1, 2 cities, the company is focusing on faster scalability in near to mid-term in the key metros. “Budget hotels require an average 80 per cent of occupancies around the year. That can only happen in the key major cities which receive not only domestic but also international corporate travellers. It is the mid-level executives who travel the most and therefore budget hotels such as Ginger have a huge potential of growth within these big cities,” said Mohankumar.