Pride to scale up Gujarat operations

Ahmedabad: Hoping to cash in on the growing business travel in Gujarat, The Pride Group of Hotels is scaling up its operations in the state.

The Mumbai-based hospitality player is eyeing major tier II cities like Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot to set up its no-frill business hotel chain, The Pride Biznotel, by next year.

The moderately priced, upscale hotel primarily targets the frequent business traveller. To be owned by the promoters of the group company, the hotel will feature around 60-125 rooms depending on the location and city, said SP Jain, Chairman, The Pride Group of Hotels.

“Gujarat is a priority market for the group. Moreover, the business travel in the state is quite frequent and the non-star, above budget hotel category hardly has any players,” he said.

While, the first The Pride Biznotel will come up in Pune, the company has begun work on properties in cities like Mahabaleshwar, Jaipur and Hyderabad.

The group is expanding its star-category hotel business across the country. Currently, it offers 430 rooms in Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Pune and Chennai and post expansion, this will go up to 1,126 rooms in the five-star category by 2009-10.

With an investment of Rs 340 crore set aside for the expansion into other cities like Bangalore, Goa, Alibaug and Mumbai, the company will be partly raising the finance through an initial public offer in the next quarter.

Kotak India Real Estate Fund and a Mauritius-based fund have invested around Rs 45 crore and Rs 10 crore respectively.