MMBL Leisure Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd. a subsidiary of the MMBL-Pathfinder Group and Welcom Hotels Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd., a subsidiary of ITC Limited, India, have inked a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a mid-market hotel chain in Sri Lanka.
The MoU was signed between MMBL Leisure Holdings (Pvt.) Ltd., Chairman, Bernard Goonetilleke and Welcom Hotels Lanka (Pvt.) Ltd., Managing Director, Arun Pathak in the presence of Shri Taranjit Singh Sandhu, High Commissioner of India in Sri Lanka and Milinda Moragoda, Founder of MMBL-Pathfinder Group.
This collaboration will initially explore developing hotels in popular tourist destinations such as Trincomalee, Katunayake, Galle, Matara and Kandy. The first development is expected to be a city hotel in Trincomalee, the first of its kind in the east coast. MMBL Leisure is a niche travel/hospitality investment subsidiary of the MMBL-Pathfinder Group. It is a joint venture with Lebara Investments B.V. of the Netherlands, a fast-growing international mobile telecommunications company with over 5 million active customers, 1,000 employees worldwide and operating in 18 countries including Australia under the brand name ‘Lebara’.
In the recent past, MMBL Leisure has helped promote and co-invested in several niche tourism projects across the island including Jetwing Jaffna, the premier business hotel in the North; Cinnamon Air, Sri Lanka’s only private domestic scheduled airline; and Lanka Houseboats, Sri Lanka’s pioneer houseboat project.
The company, together with several Sri Lankan blue chip joint venture partners, has acquired two more beach properties for development of holiday resorts in Yan Oya, approximately 50 km north of Trincomalee and Vakarai in the Eastern Province and another property at Rangala, in the Central Province near the Knuckles Mountain Range.
MMBL Leisure is also in the process of exploring the possibility of establishing a passenger/cargo ferry service between Sri Lanka and India in collaboration with a leading ferry operator in Europe.
MMBL-Pathfinder is a privately held investment and private equity group with investments in diverse sectors of the economy including financial services, business logistics, travel and leisure, property development and agriculture. The group has several strategic alliances with global brands and multinational companies.
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