Tune Hotels, part of Tune Group and co-founded by Tony Fernandes and Kamarudin Meranun, recently opened its maiden Indian property in India with launch of a 100-room hotel in Ahmedabad. With the opening of Tune Hotel Ahmedabad, there are now 29 Tune Hotels in operation globally. The rest are 11 in Malaysia, five in the UK, four in the Philippines, four in Thailand and four in Indonesia.
“The Tune Hotel Ahmedabad is our first opportunity to present our services to India’s vibrant and vast hospitality market. Our excellent amenities combine with top-class environment-friendly practices and we are encouraged with the response from our guests. It is heartening to note that guests have liked our eco-friendly character,” said Mark Lankester, Group CEO of Tune Hotels.
The Tune Hotel Ahmedabad, annexed to the newly-developed 4D Square Mall in the city’s Motera area, is well-positioned on the main thoroughfare to the state capital of Gandhinagar and a stone’s throw away from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Patel cricket stadium.
The Tune Hotel Ahmedabad is looking to serve both domestic travellers and visitors from abroad, especially members of the large non-resident Indian (NRI) community from Gujarat settled in places like the US, Britain and the Gulf.
Tune Hotels will have five to six hotels in Gujarat as part of the company’s 20 planned hotels across India in the next three years. Apart from properties in major cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai – Tune Hotels is focusing on Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities along with hotels in the tourist triangle destinations of Agra, Jaipur and Delhi.
“We are keen to reinforce our environmental-friendly practices while we build our business in India. We want our guests to be part of these eco practices and be aware of our systems and technologies that are compatible with our green standards. Our business philosophy is to strive to remain locally-relevant in each and every community we are in. This includes being responsible towards the local environment,” Lankester said.
By the end of 2013, Tune Hotels will have operating hotels in eight countries. Apart from India, Tune Hotels is set to open properties in Japan and Australia this year. Future projects are also coming up in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
