Mahindra group to open 100 room hotel in Dubai

Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd., a unit of the nation’s biggest utility vehicle maker, plans to open hotels in Dubai, Thailand and Sri Lanka this year as more Indians travel to overseas destinations. “We are in conversation with people in these countries to look at properties,” Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Sawhney said in an phone interview today. “These destinations give Indians a unique foreign experience for shopping.” The leisure and lodging company, based in the southern Indian city of Chennai, will start with 100-room hotels in each of the countries, he said. It runs 42 resorts at present.Mahindra Holidays is seeking to take advantage of the increasing number of Indians travelling overseas for leisure. Outbound tourists from the country rose almost threefold to 11.1 million in the decade to 2009, according to latest data from the Ministry of Tourism. The departures may rise to 15.4 million by 2015, according to Business Monitor International. The company, controlled by Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., also expects to benefit from growing air connectivity to the destinations by low-fare airlines, Sawhney said. Mahindra Holidays’ shares rose 1.6 per cent to Rs280.05 (Dh18) at close in Mumbai today. They have fallen 7.8 per cent this year, compared with a 9.8 per cent gain in the benchmark BSE India Sensitive Index. The company, which offers vacation ownership memberships, added 18,000 customers last year for a total of 143,000. from gulfnews.com