West Pioneer Properties, London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) listed property developer, is considering introducing

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the Holiday Inn Express branded hotels in Maharashtra.

“We’re planning to open a Holiday Inn Express hotel at our Aurangabad and Nashik properties as these markets would be ideal for this kind of a mid-market brand. We are currently evaluating whether these should be 100 room or 200 room hotels,” said Ajay Gupta, CEO at West Pioneer Properties (India).

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group), the world’s largest hotel group by number of rooms, had announced the debut of the Holiday Inn Express brand in India in October this year with four hotels proposed to be opened by Delhi-based developer, Amrapali Group. Holiday Inn Express is one of the fastest growing hotel brands in the limited service category, opening on an average two hotels a week globally. There are now 2101 Holiday Inn Express hotels in operation and 501 hotels under development globally.

“The Nashik hotel will be the first one to come up and is expected to cost around Rs 100 crore,” said Gupta. West Pioneer, with a majority stake owned by the Jatia family — the joint venture partner of McDonald’s West and South India operations, is also repositioning its Metro Junction mall at Kalyan on the outskirts of Mumbai. “The market in Kalyan has moved up and consumers have got more aspirational in line with the higher purchasing power in that market. We are therefore repositioning the mall from a value only retail destination to a value lifestyle positioning,” he said.

Gupta plans to use one floor of the yet-to-be-leased-out mall space to tenants who are into the lifestyle category though he won’t mention any names as he says discussions are underway. The footfalls at its mall have doubled over the past one-year and ticket size of purchases too is going up, he added.

“Kalyan is an open court mall that we launched in phases as retailers too needed to be convinced about the potential of the commuter city catchment. We are now adopting the value lifestyle positioning in our Nashik mall whose groundbreaking is planned for April 2011,” said Gupta. To supplement its cash flows for developing the Nasik and Aurangabad properties, the company is also developing a residential project in Kalyan where it’s selling flats at around Rs 3,900 per square feet.

“We will launch a third tower there and we have around 25-30 per cent inventory left to be sold in the second tower,” said Gupta. So far 3.72 lakh square feet of residential property is under development at Kalyan with a third tower of 1.86 lakh square feet now to be constructed. A 65,000 square feet commercial development for sale too has been launched. In Nashik, the firm plans to build a three-lakh square feet mall costing between Rs 50-60 crore adjacent to the proposed hotel. “We’re scouting for property in other cities in Maharashtra such as Mumbai, Pune and Nashik, apart from Bangalore, Coimbatore and Kerala. These could either be straight buy-outs or joint ventures,” said Gupta.