Lemon Tree pumps Rs 900-mn in three hotel projects

Ahmedabad: Lemon Tree Hotels, a new hospitality player in the country, has pumped in Rs 90 crore in its newly launched hotels in Ahmedabad, Aurangabad and Indore .

The Ahmedabad hotel has 99 rooms and it is located in Navrangpura area. The new hotel was launched within 18 months, for which the company has invested Rs 35 crore. Lemon Tree has also pumped in Rs 55 crore for rolling out hotels in Aurangabad and Indore having 102 and 100 rooms respectively.

“The Current economic turmoil and ongoing slowdown of the Indian economy is short term in nature. Reduction in demand for hotel rooms is therefore fundamentally temporary. Demand for rooms will rebound by 2010. At the same time, new supply of hotel rooms will be significantly below that which was envisaged just 6 months earlier due to this deflation in demand and the tight liquidity conditions in the market,” Lemon Tree CMD Patu Keswani said in a release.

Lemon Tree plans to have 20 hotels aggregating 2,500 rooms by 2011. The company aims to have a presence in 15 major Indian cities.