MUMBAI-Stamford, CT-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. said Thursday that it plans to open nearly 20 new hotels in India in the next three years. The company already operates 33 hotels in India, and said it is chasing a growing middle- and upper-class in the country.
This year, Starwood will open the following hotels in India: ITC Grand Chola, Westin Chennai Velachery and two Aloft hotels. With the opening of ITC Grand, the company’s Luxury Connection brand will have nine hotels in India, the largest market of the brand outside the United States.
Vasant Prabhu, Starwood’s vice chairman and CFO, said in a statement that India is second only to China in terms of future global growth. “We expect to accelerate the expansion of all of our brands across India, where demand for new hotels is expected to far exceed supply for the next three years,” he said.
After this year, the company will debut its W Hotel brand in 2015 with the opening of the W Mumbai and the W Retreat & Spa Goa, which will be followed by the opening of the W Noida Delhi NCR in 2016. Aloft is also growing, with two of the hotels already open. The Four Points by Sheraton brand, which are expanding in the country’s urban centers, will also add two new hotels in the next two years, said Starwood SVP Matthew Fry. “We have long-standing relationships with owners and developers across the country.”
The company has also relocated its regional office to a new location in Gurgaon, at Vatika Business Park on Sohna Road. The new office, with 60 employees, will handle the rapid expansion in India, the company said in the statement. Starwood has about 1,071 hotels in 100 countries.
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