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Taj Hotels launches Gateway brand

— PHOTO: SHASHI ASHIWAL

BRAND CONSCIOUS: Jyoti Narang (left), COO, Taj Gateway Hotels, and Raymond Bickson, Managing Director, Indian Hotels Company, at a press conference in Mumbai on Thursday.

MUMBAI: Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, owned by Indian Hotels Company Ltd. (IHCL) has launched a new brand, ‘The Gateway Hotel’. This brand has a pan-India network of upscale hotels and resorts that offer travellers a contemporary experience.

“The Gateway Hotel will be a new brand catering to the emerging set of contemporary travellers,” said Raymond N. Bickson, Managing Director and CEO, IHCL, while addressing the media. “Gateway is a part of the Taj Groups’ strategy to have a large footprint across India. It will be an important growth vehicle for the group and we are looking at quickly scaling up the brand to a large number of hotels across India.”

Immediately, 16 existing hotels under the Taj brand umbrella will migrate to the Gateway brand and a total of ten new hotels have already been signed up and the management is in active negotiations with another 15 hotels. “We are targeting 50 hotels in the next 36 months under the business, leisure and Extended Stay category,” said Mr. Bickson. For those hotels that are IHCL-owned property, the cost of development is around Rs. 40 lakh per key and each hotel will have an average of 150 rooms.

The hotels that are being reflagged on Thursday as Gateway are at Agra, Bangalore, Calicut, Chikmagalur, Coonoor, Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Madurai, Mangalore, Nashik, Sasan Gir, Surat, Vadodara, Varanasi, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam. The ten new hotels have been signed up in key metros — Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Jullunder, Mysore, Navi Mumbai, Raipur and Gondia.

The Taj Group has aggressive plans for the brand and is open to owned hotels and management contracts. The plan is for the brand to be present in all business districts and leisure locations across India. The brand will also explore new formats under business, leisure and extended stay categories.

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