Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), the operator of Taj brand of hotels, intends to open 24 more hotels under its affordable Ginger brand in the next 2-2.5 years, taking the total number to 86. The move will also help the Tata Group company extend the brand to another 20 cities.
“We are looking to open at least 10 hotels every year, and some of these would be in cities where we already have a presence and some in new cities. With this pipeline of new launches, Ginger’s presence will easily reach 60 cities from the present 40,” Deepika Rao, executive vice president (new businesses and hotel openings) at IHCL, told FE in an interaction.
“Some of these would be in the same markets where we already have a presence, like in Mumbai or Kochi, and some of them would be new additions,” she said, adding the new openings are buoyant on back of travel demand.
The Ginger brands operate mainly on a ‘lease model’, with the firm taking the properties on lease for 10-30 years.
The firm now has plans to open in Durgapur (West Bengal) in December, one in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu) in January and later in Srinagar (Jammu & Kashmir). IHCL is also setting up Ginger hotels in Kochi, Patna and North Goa, and also expanding its footprint in the east, including Dibrugarh and Jorhat in Assam.
“The pipeline of 24 new hotels would come up across diverse markets such as Agra, Ahmedabad, Durgapur, Dehradun, Goa and Gangtok. For Ginger, the big cities, metros, tier-I and tier-II are all opportunities,” Rao added.
Following the additions, Ginger would have a total key strength of 8,500 keys across 86 hotels. However, Ginger does not have any plans to launch properties outside the country.
On Thursday, IHCL opened another Ginger brand hotel in Mumbai. Earlier in June, it opened one in Kochi, followed by a foray into Gangtok (Sikkim) in November. In this fiscal, the company has already opened five facilities across the country.
The first Ginger hotel was opened in 2004 in Bengaluru, and it is a midscale brand in the company’s portfolio. Ginger brand’s enterprise revenue grew to 360 crore in FY23 from 200 crore in FY18, banking on signing of new deals.