The firm has held talks with the management of The Drake, a 535-room hotel currently operated by Hilton Worldwide.
Indian Hotels Company (IHCL), the company which owns the luxurious Taj Group of hotels in India and abroad, is open to acquire hotel companies and individual properties to gain scale and reach.
The Mumbai-based company, which is the second biggest in India by the number of properties, is keen to add more hotels to the lists of hotels it already owns in key markets such the United States and United Kingdom.
The move for overseas expansion is driven partly with the idea of tapping into the growing market of Indians travelling abroad. An estimated 10 million Indians travel for leisure and official visits every year.
Sources say the Tata-owned hotel group has held talks with the management's of The Drake in Chicago, a 535-room hotel constructed in 1920 and currently operated by Hilton Worldwide.
It has also held discussions with the 324-room Windsor Court Hotel in New Orleans, USA formerly owned by Orient Express Hotels before it was returned to its earlier owners. Reports suggest that IHCL had meetings with the new owners of The Watergate hotel in Washington, DC also.
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The company did not respond an email questionnaire based on specific queries sent on this issue. However, in an interview to Business Standard recently, the company's managing director Raymond Bickson spoke about plans of the Taj brand seeking greater expansion overseas.
"The challenge for us is get to be known in the foreign market. We have so many foreign travellers coming to India and some of them prefer to stay in hotel brands which are known to them because they know what they will get. Similarly, when an Indian consumer goes abroad he would recognise the Taj brand,” said Bickson.
A few years ago, IHCL bought properties in Boston, New York and San Francisco. It has forged management ties with properties owners in South Africa and Egypt to name a few. The company is eager to have more such deals in the coming period.
"We need to develop more markets because we need to be in those markets and pull the clients. All of this has happened for the Taj without acquiring another chain. So, obviously the easiest way is to acquire another chain because then you get critical mass pretty quickly, so its not that we haven't tried over the last ten years but its just that we have been growing organically," he said.
The company hopes to have a total balance of 50:50 in terms of revenues owned from domestic and overseas operations. About 30 per cent of its revenues currently come from international properties.
"In the future we have to continue looking for acquisition that would help us get international footprint much faster," Bickson said.
A few years ago, Bermuda-based Orient Express Hotels was approached by IHCL for a takeover but was turned down by its management. IHCL had picked up 10 per cent in OEH which is now down to about 7 per cent currently.
IHCL had earlier talked about a plan to demerge all its international properties and bring it under one holding company. While the India-based company would have managed properties only within the country, the new company will take care of overseas properties.
With a debt of more than Rs 3,000 crore on its books, choppy capital markets, and limited number of international properties under in its fold currently, the plan has been put on the back burner presently.
"Eventually you would see how to make that happen but for the time being we will continue to operate them as the way they are," Bickson added.