ITC upgrades hotel brand

Fortune Park Hotels Ltd, the wholly-owned subsidiary of ITC Hotels Ltd, is ready to open its 15th hotel, in Gurgaon, on December 31.

Leveraging its brand presence across 13 destinations in the country, Fortune Park has upgraded its new 83-room, mid-market property which will be known as Fortune Select Global hotel. The room rates at the hotel will vary between Rs 4,950 and Rs 5,450, roughly 25 per cent more than the average rates at other Fortune hotels.

Mandeep S Lamba, president, Fortune Park, says: "It's a logical extension of our brand and all our properties in the metros and mini metros will be rebranded as Fortune Select hotels."

The Gurgaon hotel, designed by Total Integrated Design of Singapore, is located in the Global Park business complex.

With the economy improving and domestic tourism having grown by 40 per cent in the last four years, demand for all types of hotel rooms is picking up.

According to Lamba, however, there is a "huge vacuum at the top-end of the four-star segment."

Currently, Fortune Park has an inventory of 1,600 rooms. With the company's strategy to expand in the three and four-star segment, 52 hotels are expected to be built by 2010 and the number of rooms is expected to go up to 4,200.

Eight of the new hotels will be branded as Fortune Select hotels and are expected to come up in Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore.

"The Select brand offers superior facilities," he says. It comes with a commercial centre, multicuisine restaurants and business facilities.

The company is also scouting for properties in Kerala. "We have recently got the mandate from the ITC board to take up equity selectively for the Fortune brand," says Lamba.

Currently, the average room rate at Fortune is Rs 2,200.