18 hotels, 4,000 rooms to come up in Lavasa

Lavasa will have 18 hotels with 4,000 rooms, aiming to cater to tourist requirements of the 12,500-acre project, a senior company official said.

Lavasa, a hill station being developed in the Sahyadri ranges near Pune by Hindustan Construction Corporation, will have 18 hotels with 4,000 rooms, aiming to cater to tourist requirements of the 12,500-acre project, a senior company official said.

HT Image

Industry analysts say the hotels will involve an investment of around Rs 3,000 crore.

Situated 210-km from Mumbai, Lavasa is being developed as a hub for education, tourism, conferences and research. It involves a total investment of Rs. 30,000 crore, of which Rs. 5,000 crore would be in the first phase. The HCC-led promoters have invested Rs. 1,500 crore already, a third of it in equity and the rest in debt.

Development of five of the hotels to be operated by Accor and Hilton chain is currently on and these are scheduled for opening in 2010.

The first hotel at this project, a 62-room hotel called Fortune Select Dasve, managed by ITC’s mid-tier Fortune brand has already started functioning.

“We will announce the new hotels as and when we enter into tie-ups for the next phases of development. But by early next year, we will have 1,000 hotel rooms at Lavasa,” Anuradha Paraskar, senior vice-president, Lavasa Corp, told Hindustan Times.

“We will have five star deluxe hotels in the top end to dormitory hotels for low budget tourists. We will have barracks for drivers. We need to build the infrastructure before demands picks up,” said Ajit Gulabchand, Lavasa’s chairman. He said by 2012, Lavasa will have 10,000 resident students.