A wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Group’s Indian Hotels Ltd, Roots Corp, currently runs 11 Ginger hotels, each with 100 rooms, in cities like Bangalore, Mysore, Baroda, Bhuvaneswar, Haridwar, Pondichery, etc.

Since a100-room hotel needs a lot of planning and takes time to put up, the 50-room model is being looked at for spreading out quickly to many more cities.

Talking to Deccan Herald Ginger Hotels Chief Executive Officer Prabhat Pani said “We are planning to set up 50-rrom hotels along with 100-room properties for more flexibility. This will help us expand our presence quickly in many cities where bigger hotels do not make business sense at the moment.” Ginger Hotels, which pioneered the concept of Smart Basics (no frills business hotels) in 2004, currently has around 1,100 rooms under its management.

The plan is to reach 15 hotels by the end of March 2008 and to around 60 to 70 hotels in the next 3 years. “We hope to reach a critical mass of 7,000 rooms by 2010” said Mr Pani.

Hotel in a mall

To utilise its expertise and resources better, Ginger is also planning to go for management contracts for running some of its properties in partnership where cost and revenue can be shared.

Business partners will benefit from our strong expertise in property management, net working of bookings, training of stuff, recruitment, etc, Mr Pani said.

Ginger’s first hotel in a shopping mall will be operational in March this year in Ludhiana and this will be another first in the industry, he added.