Aiana Hotels and Resorts, a Qatar-based company that will operate and manage hotels, is making its debut in India with the launch of Aiana Munnar, a premium property owned by Alex and Tsarina Vaccha, an NRI couple based in Dubai.

Aiana Hotels is a 50:50 joint venture company between Qatar’s eminent businessman Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al Thani, Chairman of Al Faisal Holding, and Amruda Nair, grand-daughter of the late founder of the Leela hotels Group Capt CP Krishnan Nair.

“At Munnar, we have signed a management agreement for a 33-villa resort on 23 acres. The property will be operational at the end of the year,” Nair said.

Other properties

MoUs for three other properties in Kerala including one on a beach and another in the backwaters have also been signed.

“We are in the upscale space with four and five star properties and are aiming at the next generation of Indian traveller,” she said, adding that MoUs have also been signed for four more hotels in Karnataka.

The first of these at Sakleshpur comprises 75-100 villas on 100 acres, the first phase of which will be launched in 2018.

Each hotel property will be unique as it will adopt a location-specific and not the cookie-cutter approach, Nair quipped.

Amongst their other projects on the anvil are managing 611 rooms in Aiana Mecca which will be ready in time for the Haj traveller in 2017, a 180-key hotel in Doha and a 150-room hotel in Agra that will have a view of the Taj Mahal, giving a total of 1,000 rooms under construction.

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