 "Ritz Carlton Hotel plans rapid expansion in India")
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Marriott International, Inc., is planning to expand its hotel chain with 30 more properties in the next five years. Its expansion includes at least four properties in India.
“India is not an easy market for us. It is a dynamic market and we took a long time to enter because we had to find right partners and right locations. We started working on our first property in Bangalore way back in 2007 and we will be opening the hotel on October 31,” said Bob Kharazmi, Global Officer, Worldwide Operations, Ritz Carlton Hotel Company said.
Though the company has made a late entry into the Indian hospitality sector, it plans to expand its footprint at many other locations. The company is currently constructing the second hotel at Gurgaon near Delhi, which will be ready in 2015, he told Business Standard.
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Between 2013 and 2016, Ritz Carlton plans to open 13 more properties to take its network to 100 hotels. The company is witnessing faster growth in Asian region. Its expansion includes doubling of hotel network from 10 to 20 in China, where it is aggressively expanding in the Tier-II cities, he said.
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company currently operates 83 hotels in the Americas, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. More than 30 hotel and residential projects are under development around the globe. In the next two months, it will open new hotels in Almaty, Kazakhstan, Aruba and Tel Aviv in Israel, he said.
In India, Ritz Carlton’s second hotel is under construction in Gurgaon, while it is in talks with several real estate developers for a property in Mumbai and Pune. “Our expansion depends on the right local partners and right locations. Any new hotel development takes at least three to four years. Ritz Carlton usually follows its customers and develops hotels in such places,” Karazmi said.
Ritz Carlton has developed a software tool internally, which helps it to track the movement of its customers and offers them similar facilities and services wherever they travel, he said adding that this software helped the company to understand that a large number of its customers from the US and UK travel to Bangalore and so it decided to open its first hotel here.
About 50 per cent of its customers would be from United States, 30 per cent from the UK and the balance from other nations and domestic customers, he said.
“The main USP of Ritz Carlton is its individualized service and memorable offerings. We offer tailor-made services through our well trained employees,” he said.
The Bangalore property is developed in partnership with Nitesh Estates. The five-star luxury property has 277 guest rooms and 21 suites, a luxurious spa, outdoor swimming pool and high-end retail boutiques among others.