The group, which has traditionally been identified with Chennai’s residential real estate market, is looking to build its hospitality portfolio alongside its core property business, with new projects in Madurai, Mysore and the Maldives.
“We are progressing parallelly in both the real estate and hospitality sectors,” Ravi Appaswamy, chairman, Appaswamy Real Estates, said in a recent interaction.
The overseas hospitality push is particularly significant. The entity is developing a second property in the Maldives on a separate 60-acre island, featuring around 30 island villas and 60 overwater villas. The project, which will operate under Marriott’s ultra-luxury Edition brand, is expected to be completed in 12-15 months.
“We’ll be spending about anywhere between $150 million and $180 million,” Appaswamy said, adding that more than 50% of the funding would be through internal accruals, with the balance coming through debt.
The group already operates a Maldives property under Marriott’s St Regis brand, which has been running for around a decade. Both properties are wholly owned by the group.
In Tamil Nadu, the hospitality expansion is moving beyond conventional business destinations to temple towns.
Having recently opened a nearly 200-room hotel in Madurai, the group is exploring opportunities in Kumbakonam and Tiruchy.
The Madurai property, located close to the airport, is designed to tap the growing meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) market in southern Tamil Nadu. Its conference infrastructure includes a hall that can accommodate 2,000 people at a time, besides multiple other halls and around 80,000 sq ft of supporting event space.
“It will open the gate for southern Tamil Nadu for bringing in a lot of conferences and the MICE market. We have already started receiving a lot of inquiries,” Appaswamy said, citing State Bank of India’s three-day annual conclave at the property as an example.
The group’s hospitality portfolio currently comprises more than 900 rooms and is approaching the 1,000-room mark.
