Monday 16 June 2014

Aitken Spence mulling more Indian hotel acquisitions

By Ravi Ladduwahetty

Ceylon FT: Leisure rich diversified blue chip Aitken Spence will be going in for more Indian hotel acquisitions based on the success of the newly acquired ‘Fern’ the five star property in Chennai for US$ 22 million.

“We are buoyant on the prospects in the Indian hotel industry, with the IT industry also building up there, which has been developing at a rapid pace since 2011. This is the area that is called the OMR stretch, where there are a large number of star class hotels,” Aitken Spence Group Managing Director/ CEO Rajan Brito told Ceylon FT.

He also said that the group would be monitoring the performance of the newly acquired hotel for the next three years against the Indian hotel backdrop and if the performance was positive, they would be proceeding with more acquisitions in the sub continental market, which would impact the group’s bottom line.

The group would also be looking forward to merging tourism synergies between its local chain of hotels, its new Indian acquisition and the already operated ones in the Maldives as well. “This will be a new option that we will be offering to the European visitors in our sales programmes, Brito said.

One of the reasons for the Spence decision of acquiring the Fern was due to the belief that the Indian economy would be booming under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who transformed the state of Gurarat as its former Chief Minister

He also described the acquisition price of US$ 22 million for Fern as very competitive as the Indian seller – the Rayala Group had wanted to sell it due to being burdened by debt. “They had finished the hotel at a cost of 120 Crore (1 Crore= Indian Rs 10 million) and decided to get rid of it due to these problems and the price was cheap,” he said. One of the principle challenges that the Spence Group would be faced with, would be maintain average prices and rates, which would also be impacting the group’s bottom line.
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