India's Lemon Tree hotels plans eastward expansion

Lemon Tree Hotel Company, a chain of hotels in India that cover the upscale, midscale and economy segments, is expanding eastward.  

Cyrus Madan, VP of business development for Lemon Tree Hotels, said that the company would be acquiring an upscale hotel in Kolkata (also known as Calcutta), and would manage two midscale hotels in Siliguri and Gangtok, Sikkim. (The two managed hotels would have 130 rooms between them.) Lemon Tree is also planning to open hotels in Asansol, Bhubaneswar, and Mirik. “West Bengal is the sixth-largest contributor to India's net domestic product,” Madan told the Economic Times

Currently, Lemon Tree owns and operates 40 hotels in 23 Indian cities for a total room count of more than 4,000. (According to its website, Lemon Tree is the third-largest hotel chain in India by owned rooms.) By 2019, the company is looking to double that room count and have more than 60 hotels across 30 major cities. Some notable development hotspots Madan suggested include Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Bandhavgarh, Bengaluru, Bhiwadi, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Dahej, Gangtok, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon, Goa, Hyderabad, Indore, Jaipur, Jammu, Katra, Lucknow, Kolkata, Manesar, Muhamma (Kerala), Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Shimla, Siliguri, Srinagar, Trichy, Udaipur and Vadodara.