Kolkata-headquartered fledgling hotel group Daiwik Hotels Pvt Ltd is betting big on the growth of pilgrim hotel business in the country. The company, which at present, runs two full service 4-star pilgrim hotels at Rameswaram in Tamil Nadu and Shirdi in Maharashtra, has lined up plans to come up with 18-20 such pilgrim hotels across the country over the next five years. These hotels, together, would entail an investment of close to Rs 600 crore in the next five years, Debashis Ghosal, Managing Director and CEO, Daiwik Hotels Pvt Ltd, said. Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh, Dwarka in Gujrat, Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh and Katra in Jammu & Kashmir are some of the other destinations that the company is looking at.
Ghosal, a Chartered Accountant by training and profession, who started Kolkata’s first multiplex, said, “Globally, pilgrim tourist comprises 65 per cent of the total tourist. In India also, the trend is the same. Going by these figures, India, whose overall domestic tourist is estimated to be 800 million, should be having 480-500 million pilgrim tourists. And it’s growing at nearly 15 per cent per annul. We want to cash in on that. And I think we have reasons to be upbeat over the prospects.”
The company is already in talks with a number of leading VC and PE Funds to mobilize the funds required for this expansion programme. The company will put up some greenfield properties, take over some existing properties and upgrade them, developing properties jointly with local property owner and take up management contract lending its own brand name, said Ghosal.
There is a huge demand and supply gap in the pilgrimage hospitality sector in the country for quality branded products which are standardized in the mid-segment market. And the Kolkata-based company is gearing up to bridge this gap effectively. The company is looking at offering full service 4-star facilities including multi-cuisine restaurant, fully-furnished banquets, activity room for kirtans, bhajans, discourses, a special spa, and related retail facilities including books, music, artifacts, traditional jewellery and mementos.
