Tobacco-to-hotels major ITC Ltd will be setting up 29 new hotels under its Fortune Park and WelcomHeritage chains by end-2004.

At present, Fortune Park has 602 rooms at nine locations. Following the expansion, it will be offering 1,160 rooms at 15 locations in the first phase.

In the second phase, one more location and 203 more rooms will be commissioned, according to a media release from ITC.

WelcomHeritage has 27 properties including two tented camp complexes, offering 707 rooms and 120 tents, mostly in the premium category.

According to Rakesh Mathur of WelcomHeritage, the number of properties under WelcomHeritage will go up to 50 by end-2004.

The locations under study were palaces and mansions in Mysore, Hyderabad, Pondicherry and parts of Kerala, besides Rewa and Orchha in Madhya Pradesh and possibly Gujarat. The disturbances in Gujarat have proved to be a dampener.

Mathur said palaces and havelis built in traditional Indian style were difficult and expensive to convert into hotels but owners had started to appreciate the benefits of preserving them and turning them into viable heritage hotel properties.

Three Fortune Park hotels, at Madurai, Tirupati and Hyderabad, will be opened to public by June 2003.

They will offer 309 nine rooms in this phase, and the Hyderabad hotel will be scaled up to offer 72 more rooms in the next two months.

In October 2003, Fortune Park will add on one more hotel of 75 rooms on the outskirts of Kolkata. In early 2004, a fifth hotel of 165 rooms will be commissioned at T-Nagar in Chennai. By June 2004, Gurgaon will the site of the sixth hotel, a 81-room high-rise structure.

A wholly owned subsidiary of ITC Hotels, Fortune Park focuses on the mid-priced business and leisure segments. ITC investment for Fortune Park were not available.

Hotel and travel industry sources said rooms in this category would cost between Rs 20 lakh (Rs 2 million) and Rs 40 lakh (Rs 4 million) a room, indicating that the total expansion plan would cost around Rs 150-200 crore (Rs 1.5-2 billion).