CCIL Diversifies Into Wildlife Resorts & Adventure Holidays

Ashish K Tiwari - Mumbai

With domestic tourism making waves in the last over a couple of years and enterprising vacations catching fancy of the new breed of holidayers, wildlife and adventure resorts have started garnering attention from leading hospitality players. Joining the bandwagon is Country Club (I) Ltd (CCIL). The company recently acquired its first wild life property, Bush Betta, in Bangalore - next to the Bandipur wildlife national park.

Elucidating his reasons for diversification, Y Rajeev Reddy, CMD, CCIL, said, "Wildlife and adventure vacations are lately getting holidayer's attention and the market is expected to get bigger in the coming years. However, more efforts towards popularising it amongst the domestic tourists is still required to achieve the desired results. I personally enjoy adventure and wildlife vacations and diversifying into this segment with Bush Betta affirms CCIL's commitment towards promoting this concept in the country. This wildlife property will be operated under our Country Vacations venture. To effectively market the said vacation, we have also introduced a premium membership card called 'Mr Cool'."

Spread over 20 acres of wild forest area the 60 cottage resort is located right inside the jungle and is just four kilometres off the Bangalore-Ooty Highway. Each cottage comprises spacious three to four rooms and to be able to accommodate more guests, CCIL is looking at further investing into the property and enhance capacity by way of adding more rooms.

"Rechristened Country Club Bush Betta the property will be operated as a resort cum club cum time-share property and is been acquired at a cost of Rs 5 crore. We will be undertaking renovations and expanding the accommodation facilities at the resort. Another Rs 5 crore will be spent on adding 100 rooms and suites in addition to 100 tent accommodation to the existing set-up. An interesting offering at Bush Betta is 'The Beast', our health club cum spa," informed Reddy.

Other plans for CCIL's Country Vacations include acquiring another six properties in various destinations viz Ooty, Goa, Khandala, Lonavala, Kodaikanal and other locations in and around Bangalore. The company is also the process of setting up its offices in New York USA, UK and major cities in northern India.

"We will be investing to the tune of Rs 100 crore in the next two years entirely in the area of wild life and adventure tourism. The basic aim is to give our patrons variety of vacationing options. We are now a debt free company thus the acquisitions will be done via internal accruals primarily and borrowed funds if need be," concluded Reddy.