Little Earth eyes K'taka for expansion

The Little Earth Group, the Ooty-based agri-business and hospitality company, which owns adventure resorts and theme hotels in the hill station, is eyeing major tourism destinations in south and western India for its expansion.

The five-year-old firm is currently in the process of setting up three resorts in Karnataka at an investment of Rs 10 crore and looking for suitable places in Kerala, Goa and Maharashtra.

According to Vijaya Prabhu, founder and mentor of The Little Earth Group, the company would be setting up its first jungle resort near Bandipur National Park and at Chikmagalur in Karnataka.

The company will develop these resorts based on the themes "� forest and coffee plantation. While the third resort in Karnataka will be a 'heritage resort' at Mysore, for which the company is searching for a proper historical building in the city of palaces.

At present, the Little Earth group owns four properties in Ooty: King's Cliff, Sherlock, Destiny and Sundance. The rooms in King's Cliff, a 120-year-old British bungalow, are named after the characters from Shakespeare's dramas and rooms at Sherlock are derived from Sherlock Holmes novel. The Destiny is a 'farm stay' resort located in the midst of an agriculture farm spread over 120 acres where the tourists will get an opportunity to go around to see farming and dairying.

Prabhu said the company will be setting up resorts on its own property at Chikmagalur and Bandipur while it is looking for a historical building on lease in Mysore. The company owns a coffee plantation in Chikmagalur where its new resort is being developed. Each of these resort will have 18-20 rooms. The company plans to open them by 2009-end.

"Our target is to cover the whole of south India and western India in the next two to three years. The theme of our resorts will be adventure and heritage," Prabhu said.

Presently, The Little Earth Group is witnessing an average occupancy of over 50 per cent at its resorts and its King's Cliff resort is popular as it sees over 80 per cent of occupancy.

The company has hired instructors from Himalayan Mountaineering Institute to conduct outdoor activities like rock climbing, rappelling, valley crossing, trekking and camp fire at its resorts.

The company aims to promote its resorts for corporate outbound training programmes. It has already attracted companies like Bayer Crop Science, KPMG, Pricol and SAP Labs.