ITC Hotels’s ambitions are not big enough

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Editor's note: A slumbering giant is waking up. ITC Hotels, which seemed content playing second fiddle to industry leader Indian Hotels Company Ltd, has been making headlines for the right reasons the past month.  Two bits of news in particular have excited investors in its parent, the Kolkata-based conglomerate ITC Ltd. Both ITC chairman and managing director Sanjiv Puri as well as hotels division chief executive Anil Chadha have reiterated that the plan to demerge ITC Hotels is very much on the table. “Work is ongoing on this front,” Chadha said in this report.  Naysayers may counter that the option to separately list ITC Hotels has been on the table for a while, and nothing has moved beyond assurances. But there’s something else.  ITC Hotels plans to add a hotel almost every month for the next two years. While nearly all its brands will expand their portfolios, it’s the plan for the two newest brands—Mementos and Storii—that marks a more aggressive step from the company. With the new brands, the company will make a definite shift from the traditional model of building …