Mahindra Holidays to invest up to Rs 4,500 crore for doubling room capacity to 10,000

Mahindra Holidays & Resorts India Ltd (MHRIL) plans to invest up to Rs 4,500 crore in the next three to four years to double its room capacity to 10,000, according to company Managing Director and CEO, Kavinder Singh. The company is actively pursuing partnerships with state governments besides setting up new resorts, brownfield expansion and acquisitions to achieve the target of increasing room count from 5,000 to 10,000 by FY30. "We have all the strategies on the table to get from 5,000 to 10,000 rooms. We are well on our way there," Singh told PTI.

At the moment, about Rs 835 crore of investment is underway for five greenfield, brownfield, and acquisition projects, comprising about 690 keys. "We are very confident this investment will get scaled to at least Rs 2,000 crore in the next year and very quickly we will scale it up to Rs 4,000-4,500 crore in three to four years time because you need to deliver 5,000 keys by 2030," he said.

On the strategy for expansion, Singh said apart from greenfield, brownfield and acquisitions, the company is also emphasising on public-private partnership (PPP). "We have already tied up with the Uttarakhand government and identified two pieces of land to do Rs 1,000 crore investment. Then we also have signed an MoU with the Tamil Nadu government for about Rs 800 crore investment," he said. Further, Singh said,"We are also at this moment of time engaged with the Odisha government and we have been allotted two pieces of land that will help us to invest at Rs 500 crore if not more in Odisha.

" Besides, the company is still looking at another piece of land in the Puri area, he added. "So, PPP as a route to scale up is another weapon beyond greenfield and brownfield (expansions). The fourth weapon is acquisitions. We (are constantly) looking at resort properties, which are available and can meet our requirement, which can be refurbished to our standards is also going on," he added.

In January this year, the company had announced that it would invest Rs 800 crore in Tamil Nadu to build three greenfield resorts over the next five to six years. It would be the second-largest investment by MHRIL, following the Rs 1,000 crore investment in Uttarakhand last year. MHRIL has 102 resorts across India and abroad as on June 30, 2023. Its subsidiary, Holiday Club Resorts Oy (HCR), Finland, has 33 Timeshare Properties, including nine spa resorts across Finland, Sweden, and Spain.