A room of the first indiOne hotel at Whitefield on the outskirts of Bangalore. (An AFP file picture)

Siliguri, Sept. 12: Four-star comfort for the man on the street.

Fashioning plans to woo the masses, the Tata group is coming to Siliguri with its indiOne chain of hotels, which will provide high-end hospitality at affordable prices.

Rajeev Mahendroo, senior manager, indiOne, flew in from Mumbai on Friday for discussions with Siliguri-Jalpaiguri Development Authority chief executive Rajesh Pandey and local tour operators and to survey the four sites identified by the SJDA.

?We will provide them the required land. We have given them four choices. Mahendroo has visited all of them and on September 20, he is expected to tell us which one has been finally selected. IndiOne has also conducted a market survey of the region,? Pandey said. Siliguri is one of four towns in West Bengal where indiOne will have a property. Haldia, Durgapur and Calcutta are the others.

IndiOne, touted as ?smart basics? hotels, is part of the Tatas? plan to target the masses, an idea derived from management guru C.K. Prahalad?s theory that the poor ought not to be seen as a burden but rather as a market with a huge growth potential.

Over the next five years, the Tatas plan to build a rash of low-budget hotels ? around 150 across the country at a cost of Rs 10 crore each ? with a room tariff that will be less than Rs 1,000 a day.

Though the pricing will be reasonable, indiOne is expected to have all the four-star facilities. The rooms will have modern facilities like electronic locks, a mini-fridge, a 17-inch wall-mounted flat TV, tea and coffee machines, internet services and a work area.

The hotel will also have a multi-cuisine restaurant, a cyber caf?, conference rooms, gymnasium, digital safe deposit box and doctor-on-call facilities.

Indian Hotels, the owners of the upper crust Taj brand of deluxe hotels, launched indiOne in Bangalore in June, with an aim to tap the huge middleclass. Roots Corporation, a fully-owned subsidiary of Indian Hotels that will operate indiOne, plans to take the concept across India, to prominent pilgrimage centres like Tirupati and Hardwar and tertiary cities like Bhubaneswar, Coimbatore and suburbs in metro cities.

Tour operators, who have been complaining of the lack of star hotels in Siliguri, have hailed indiOne?s entry. ?It will facilitate the growth of tourism, particularly of the corporate nature,? said Samrat Sanyal, the general secretary of East Himalayan Travel and Tour Operators? Association.