Taj Hotels

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India's Tata returns to Dhaka with Taj Hotel

Tata Group-owned Indian Hotels Company Limited (IHCL), which operates Taj hotels worldwide, has announced the launch of two luxury hotels in Dhaka's elite Gulshan area soon. They have also concluded agreements with local partners in this regard.

According to Bangla Tribune, the possible names of these two luxury hotels will be 'Taj Gulshan' and 'Vivanta Gulshan'.

Taj and Vivanta are actually luxury and premier brands of Indian hotels companies. Apart from India, this group has many hotels in various countries including America, Britain, Maldives, South Africa, Zambia, United Arab Emirates, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan. Dhaka is now set to join the list with the twin hotels of Taj and Vivanta.

Puneet Chhatwal, Managing Director and CEO of IHCL said, "Bangladesh is one of the fastest growing economies in the world. It is also the second largest economy in the whole of South Asia. Therefore, we feel proud to be in Bangladesh."

Chhatwal also said that the Taj Hotel Group has had a significant presence in West Bengal for a long time. Again, the geographical and cultural proximity of Bangladesh with West Bengal is well known. As a result, they see this investment in Dhaka as a 'strategic association' or strategic relationship.

IHCL has also signed an agreement with Borak Real Estate, owned by the well-known business conglomerate Unique Group of Bangladesh, to develop these two hotels.

Gulshan is one of the main business centers in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. Borak Real Estate is building a 'mixed-use' development project on the same Gulshan – where both the Taj hotels will be located. In that complex, there will be arrangements for 'high end retail' i.e. shopping for expensive products. The site is also very close to Dhaka's Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.

Earlier in 2004, when the four-party coalition government led by Khaleda Zia was in power in Bangladesh, India's Tata Industrial Group made an investment proposal of $2.5 billion.

The Tatas wanted to build two power plants, a steel mill and a fertilizer plant in Bangladesh. The proposal was formally submitted to the government in April 2005. Later the amount of proposed investment was also increased to 3 billion dollars. But their talks with the Tatas stalled in 2006 as Khaleda Zia's government hesitated to approve the project.

Later in July 2008, Tata Group's then Executive Director Alan Rosling formally informed the Bangladesh Board of Investment that they were withdrawing the proposal. The Bangladesh government failed to guarantee supply of fuel gas to the proposed projects – this was the argument given as the reason for the withdrawal.

Almost 15 years after that incident, the Tatas are re-entering and investing in Bangladesh through their hotel brand – a move seen by industry and economic observers as highly significant.

According to Dev Kapadia, an expert in this sector, "This decision of the Tatas is proof of the radical changes that have taken place in the economy of Bangladesh in the last one century and the high-end demand in the market. We also understand that the Bangladesh of 2006 and today's Bangladesh are not the same as investment destinations."