The government will invite financial bids for buying out eight Indian Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) properties shortly.
The Taj group, ITC Hotels, Accor, the Oberoi group, Hyatt Regency, Carlson Hospitality and Bass Plc have already shown interest in the properties. "Financial bids will be invited shortly from bidders," sources close to the disinvestment process said.
The properties on the block include Ashok Calcutta Airport, Ashok Bangalore, Ashok Samrat, Kanishka, Qutab and Lodhi Hotel in New Delhi, Lalitha Mahal Palace in Mysore, Kovalam Ashok in Thiruvananthapuram and Laxmi Vilas Palace Hotel in Udaipur.
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The Centre plans to privatise the ITDC properties in two phases. The first batch of hotels to be privatised includes Ashok hotels in New Delhi, Bangalore, Agra, Manali, Hassan, Madurai, Gaya and Temple Bay at Mahabalipuram near Chennai.
The second batch comprises Lodhi, Ranjit, Samrat, Indra Prastha, Kanishka and Janpath hotels in New Delhi, apart from Ashok hotel at Varanasi and Laxmi Vilas hotel at Udaipur. Bidders can buy either individual hotels or a bunch of these properties.
The global advisors for ITDC have also recently invited prospective buyers to buy the remaining assets of the corporation in the second phase. The ITDC properties have been valued by the global advisors, said the sources.
Recently, the cabinet committee on disinvestment decided to demerge ITDC into a number of companies, each representing a separate property.
The new entities will be sold to bidders individually or collectively. The authorised and the paid-up equity capitals of each hotel would be fixed at around Rs 1 lakh each and the actual price fetched by each property would then be decided on the basis of the premium offered by the bidders.
The department of disinvestment and the ministry of tourism have already appointed chartered accountants, law firms and asset valuers to go through the exercise of creating a separate company out of each ITDC property.