HBI Staff | Hyderabad 
According to MINT, India Expo Centre and Mart, an enterprise of the ministry of textiles and handicrafts as well as exporters, based in Greater Noida, has built an upscale hotel on its 56 acre premises. The hotel will have 134 rooms and will open for business around mid December.
The company said its project cost was around INR 100 crore which it deployed during the pandemic years of 2021-22. The hotel is being operated by Four Seasons Hospitality Pvt. Ltd that also has a catering arm called ‘Seasons’.
Rakesh Kumar, chairman of the India Exposition Mart, said, “This business hotel is the first of its kind in the country with a stay option within the trade fair venue. The venue is booked out about 260 days a year and we expect it will do good business as it is attached to the main expo center,” he said.
Following this, the company will deploy more capital to set up another hotel by 2024 of a similar scale. The company said it has been profitable since its inception in 2004, barring the covid period when meetings and events were suspended, and the second hotel will be built from its IPO proceeds.
The Noida-based company had filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) for a INR 600 crore initial public offering in March. India Expo Centre and Mart was set up as a special purpose vehicle company with Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts, or EPCH, the Greater Noida Authority and private exporters. Its board consists of directors from the Greater Noida authority and the ministry of textiles as well as exporters. It is in the top five largest integrated exhibitions and conventions venues in the country and is spread over 56 acre.
In its DRHP, the company stated that its revenue from operations was at INR 10.66 crore in FY21, down from INR 154.4 crore in FY20. Its loss for the corresponding period was INR 5.3 crore, down from a profit of INR 44.89 crore in FY20 primarily due to the pandemic.
The venue hosts about 40 conferences a year including the auto expo and hopes the hotel will bring it more sustained business. It has about 23 lakh square feet of built up area and hosts business-to-business exhibits, conferences, congresses, product launches, and promotional events, among others.
India has about 1.5 lakh branded hotel rooms. Based on the research that hospitality consultancy Hotelivate has done, there are about 59,000 new rooms proposed to come across the country in the next five years. Of this, 72% or about 35,000 rooms are under active development, said the consultancy.
(Source: Mint)
