“I am glad that Clean India Show is going to be held in Gujarat, this year. Gujarat is supposed to play the harbinger’s role in the ‘Clean India’ mission and therefore, I think, this is the most appropriate place for this show.”
Gujarat, Goa, Kerala, Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh are fast moving towards the forefront of tourism spots. The government initiatives to develop and market tourism will boost the hospitality industry; thus creating new market for opportunities for cleaning products.
Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL) has presence in almost all the cities of Gujarat and the group has already got the grant gateway to expand. The Ginger hotels is operational in Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara… and is coming up in Vapi soon.
The 3G Saga: Gujarat, Ginger & Growth
“The first and foremost thing that comes to my mind is the ease of doing business in Gujarat with its single window clearances for the required approvals and accesses. It is a big boon for fast tracking projects. This pushes the project 20% ahead in terms of time.
“I think there are many aspects attractive enough to promote the hospitality sector in the loop. We are looking at business tourism, infrastructure, project related travels, and also there is a strong presence of large, medium and small scale industries. We are exploring all the guest profiles for hotel-site development.
“We are looking at opportunities such as transforming potential unbranded hotels to Ginger, either through the ownership or the franchise. We believe a lot of these family run hotels have the potential of becoming branded hotels with full compliance of rules and regulations.
Besides Surat, Vadodara, and Ahmedabad we are looking at places in Vapi, Bhavnagar, and Rajkot. The ‘3G’ Gujarat, Ginger and Growth are fast becoming synonyms. “I feel that Ginger has the potential to come to all the tier I and tier II cities of Gujarat.” Countrywide, Ginger’s growth is going to be exponential and “we are going to ramp up our inventories from 30 hotels to 100 hotels. It will happen by 2017-18”.
Outsourcing FS
“Worldwide, hotels are now outsourcing facility services. Among the very first in India, Ginger Hotels took a bold step in outsourcing not only the peripheral activities but also the core activities of the group both – hard and soft services including catering. Budget hotels or service providers, both run on low margin profits; hence the desired quality can only be achieved through outsourcing and connecting with them as esteemed business partners.
“In India, there is a lack of national players who can provide us the facility services across the country, hence depending on the availability, we have to outsource to different players as ISS, OCS and Forbes Facility. We have chosen them depending on the force and good impact they can have in the area (regional wise). I feel, ISS is good in the West.”
Concerns
“The lease of land is a very expensive affair and if calculated as per with a built up room then the budget hotel project will not be viable. That is the reason why the development of the infrastructure of the tourism is actually slow. The government should divide a city in zones or come up with a master plan where the allocation of land could be kept aside for hotel development too. They may try and give it out on lease basis.”
Suprita Anupam