JKH hotels looking at Indochina, Gulf

Keells Hotels Ltd (KHL), the leisure arm of John Keells Holding (JKH) Plc, is scouting around for opportunities in Indochina and the Middle East, according to a top official at JKH.

“IndoChina or the Indochinese Peninsula is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly east of India, south of China and is something we are pursuing actively.

Our team is there right now,” Ajith Gunawardena, Deputy Chairman JKH told The Sunday Times FT.

He said that KHL plan to focus on the Middle East, but it is at present in a premature stage. “Middle East is very early days right now for us.

There are a few opportunities we are evaluating there at the moment,”he added.

When asked whether it was Vietnam the company had set its sights on, he stressed it was more Indochina.

Indochina includes the entire Southeast Asian Peninsula from Malaysia through Thailand, Burma, Laos and Cambodia to Vietnam (in effect the countries between India and China).

Gunawardena noted that there were several opportunities that were presented to JKH mainly in India, but they were not attractive in terms of ‘size’. “When we go for an investment, it has to be of a reasonable size.

We have been offered several opportunities for management and potential acquisitions of properties, but some are not of the size and scale that would interest us at the moment.

The return on investment criteria should be interesting,” he added.

He further added that these properties were not attractive mainly because resource allocation was not justified in terms of profitability and the quantum of profits.