Indian Hotels Company Ltd (IHCL), a Tata group company that runs the Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces chain of hotels, will be launching a fourth brand in the next few months. This brand will be placed between the company?s already existing brands – Taj (luxury) and the recently launched Gateway (upscale). The company also has budget brand – Ginger.
The Gateway Hotel brand was launched recently as part of the company?s ongoing re-structuring process in a bid to have better clarity in its portfolio. Talking to FE on the sidelines of the announcement of the second quarterly results (Q2?09), Ajoy K Misra, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Indian Hotels Company Ltd, said, ?We will be launching the fourth brand in the next few months. The details of the new brand are being worked out at the moment.? The company plans to have specific brand to cater to specific set of travellers.
?The fourth brand will be our upper up-scale brand,? Misra said. Asked how many existing properties will be re-branded under this fourth brand, he said, ?The number will be large, more than the ones re-branded under the Gateway brand. We are in talks with our associates, joint venture partners.? IHCL brought 18 properties under the Gateway brand. In the next three years, the company is aiming to have 50 hotels under the Gateway brand, an upscale brand.
Currently, IHCL has 12 luxury, 20 business, 28 leisure and 12 budget hotels, domestically, and 8 luxury, 4 business and 4 leisure hotels, internationally. Of the total revenue of the IHCL, luxury segment stands at 72%, leisure 13% and business at 15%. During the year 2008-09, IHCL will be opening around nine hotels including cities like Bangalore, Panjim, Varanasi, Chennai and Trivandrum, among others. At present IHCL has 72 hotels in India and 16 hotels overseas.