Budget hotel brand Ginger Hotels is on an expansion spree. The brand from Roots Corporation, a subsidiary of Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) expects to run 80 hotels in the next 3-4 years.

“From the current 25 hotels we expect to ramp up our inventory to about 80 hotels in the next 3-4 years. We have about seven hotels at various stages of operations which will be up and running in the next 12-18 months,” said Mr Prabhat Pani, CEO & director, Roots Corporation Ltd. It opened its 25th hotel in Faridabad on Monday.

Its upcoming hotels will be in locations such as Noida, Greater Noida, Chandigarh, Amritsar and Chennai among others.

The company constructs its own hotels or runs hotels on the lease model, where the external structure is leased to the company and it invests in building interiors and fixtures of the hotels. “I believe a great part of our hotels in the future too, will be owned by us or will be leased and operated,” he said, adding that very few of its future inventory will be run on management contracts.

Plugging the gaps

After building a steady flow of inventory in the “next-level cities” such as Ahmedabad , Baroda, Nasik, Pune, Mysore, Trivandrum, the budget hotel chain is focused on “plugging the gaps” by strengthening its presence in the key metros . The company will be seeing some stiff competition from international brands and domestic brands which are looking to tap into the growing demand for affordable hotels.

Building larger meeting rooms to cater to corporate demand and having two restaurants rather than one with full-fledged kitchens in most of its hotels, brand Ginger has been going through a series of tweaks in its strategy in the past few years.

The company also believes slowdown has never been a deterrent. “Even in 2008 or the recent downturn, we have seen more and more corporates tying up with us for accommodation as they think this is one of the ways they can control costs,” Mr Pani added.

>Meenakshi.v@thehindu.co.in

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