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Hotel Talk
Starwood to bring all its brands to India
Neeti- Mehra - Mumbai
Outlining its strategy for the Indian market, American hospitality major Starwood
Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is poised to introduce all brands in its portfolio
into India, preferably through the joint venture route where the hotel chain
will have a 20-25 per cent equity stake.
Thomas Monahan, head of acquisition and development for Starwood Asia Pacific,
said, "Our brand portfolio includes everything from the top end luxury
brands all the way down to 'aloft' and Element. We are currently in negotiations
for all our brands. There is room for all our brands in India."
Starwood has divested assets in America and Europe over the last few years while
retaining a long term management contract, and is turning to growth markets
in Asia, including India with an equity-based development strategy. Its presence
in India over the past three decades has been through a franchise agreement
with ITC. Monahan said, "We had strategically divested our non-core assets
in those regions. We don't want to be asset light but asset right. We're relatively
underweighted equity wise in Asia. We will always own assets, but we don't want
to own them all in North America. We are primarily a management contract machine
this side of the world. But we are increasingly looking for investment opportunities
and want to grow with a developer who can bring more than one deal to the table"
The group is currently focusing on its Sheraton brand, with a property announced
in Bangalore with the Brigade Group, a Westin in Gurgaon and Bangalore, and
two more in the pipeline, plus its lifestyle brand aloft for which it is targeting
at least 15 properties within the next three to five years. He added, "We
see a lot of potential in the secondary locations in major cities, and secondary
and tertiary cities, IT parks and business campuses for Four Points by Sheraton
as well as aloft."
| Starwood Hotels & Resorts has entered into an
exclusive tie-up with ITC-Welcomgroup bringing in its premium brand, The
Luxury Collection, to India. The seven hotels which will be part of this
unique brand are: ITC Maurya in Delhi, ITC Maratha and ITC Grand Central
in Mumbai, ITC Sonar in Kolkata, ITC Windsor in Bangalore, ITC Kakatiya
in Hyderabad and ITC Mughal in Agra. The agreement includes the re-branding
of WelcomHotel New Delhi as a Sheraton, while the Chola and the Park in
Chennai, and the Rajputana in Jaipur, will continue to retain their Sheraton
connections.
With this tie-up, these ITC-Welcomgroup hotels will join
the list of exclusive properties that are part of Starwood's 'Luxury Collection',
which consists of 60 properties worldwide. Commenting on the new agreement,
YC Deveshwar, chairman of ITC, said, "A three decade-old relationship
has been strengthened." The tie-up with Sheraton Hotels came into
being on January 1 1979.
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