Financial Times

With its four hotel properties in Maldives showing huge profits, Aitken Spence Hotels wants to venture into India and is discussing a joint venture with an Indian firm to manage two resorts in Chennai.

It is also actively pursuing a city hotel in India and plans to unveil its new logo for the Aitken Spence Group after 140 years if its existence.

The company’s Maldives resorts recorded more than 75 percent profit. Aitken Spence and Company’s Managing Director, Rajan Britto told The Sunday Times FT on the sidelines of a press conference announcing the company’s new hotel brand, Heritance that there will be a slight change in the Group’s logo to bring more unity to the group.

“There will be a slight rebranding, re-emphasising and a slight change in the logo to bring unity in the group, whether it is in printing, plantations, garments or anything else and we will be coming out with the new logo in about a month's time,” Britto explained.

Another company source said they are discussing with an Indian company a joint venture partnership to manage two resort hotels – one in Kerala and the other in the Andaman Islands. “We always work as a joint venture initially and when we are familiar with the terrain, we will venture on our own,” he said
Mr Britto said the company is also pursuing a city hotel in India. Mr Britto said that a Colombo city hotel is a short to medium term plan of the company and the Colombo Hilton is not a proposition at all because of the rumoured high price it is supposed to ask. “Also we are not in the habit of buying other people’s hotels.

Our model has always been to build a hotel and not buy a hotel ever since we ventured out into tourism in the 1970s,” he said.

He said 2005 was a year of consolidation for the Group and like a ‘launching pad’ for 2006. “Our most profitable sectors are shipping, cargo logistics and infrastructure for 2005,” he said, adding that the annual report will be released on June 6.