Hotelier With a Creative Instinct

NINETEEN YEARS ago, Dimitri Klein left his job at a leading advertising agency in Paris, France and headed to Auroville, Pondicherry for a ‘better way of life’. At Auroville he learnt yoga and meditation and met Dilip Kapur, the president of Hidesign. Klein became his special advisor and helped Kapur with his marketing strategy.

A couple of years later Hidesign decided to enter the hospitality sector. Klein went into partnership with Kapur and took over the building of Promenade and Le Dupleix, two Hidesign hotels.

“I enjoyed the creativity involved and that’s how hospitality happened for me,” laughs Klein.
In 2002, Klein bought 35 acres of barren land on the outskirts of Pondicherry and started the process of converting it into a green haven. He planted trees, shrubs and plants. He built 15 bungalows and was all set to open the Dune Eco Village and Spa on January 1, 2005.

Unfortunately, the tsunami struck Pondicherry on December 26, 2004 and his resort was badly impacted. He sold back his share in Hidesign hospitality to Kapur as he needed funds to rebuild his resort. By the end of the year he opened it with 62 unique cottages.

The spa called Paradise Spa was added a year later. Last week, Deepak Chopra, an Indian American author, public speaker and alternative medicine advocate who is responsible for taking Ayurveda to the West opened his first Chopra Healing Centre in India at the Dune Eco Village and Spa.

“The property is very different from a normal resort. It’s ecological and it’s low density. Only 62 accommodation spread out in 35 acres. A normal hotel would have had at least 150 accommodation. So this is a choice. We want to give more privacy to people and more space. Today space is a luxury. Even when the property is full you don’t feel it except at breakfast time when you suddenly see so many people at the restaurant,” says Klein explaining the philosophy behind the resort.

The resort employs almost 120 service staff, that’s nearly two per room. “The ratio in the West is 0.4 per room. We want our guests to feel special and have an unforgettable experience,” says Klein.

The staff is friendly and the resort has a homely feel. “We think of our guests as a big family. Service is homely. Guests need to be comfortable in the environment. We want people to feel at home.”

His philosophy seems to be working as nearly 4 per cent of his guests return over and over again. “We have some guests who have made it their mission to stay in each of the 62 accommodation types. They visit every month and stay in a different accommodation. Some are well on their way to crossing the halfway mark,” says Klein cheerfully.

The USP of Dune lies in the fact that it is environmentally friendly. “Our carbon footprint per room is 85 per cent lower than traditional hotels,” explains Klein. The resort has solar panels that help heat the water. It has a waste water treatment plant that recycles the water for use in gardens. Only organic products are used in housekeeping so much so that even the table mats in the restaurant have been made of recycled plastic bags.

The other USP is that all food served at the hotel is organic. Dune has its own 100 acre farm at Kodaikanal where everything from pulses to millets to rice and vegetables are grown. Dune even cultivates its own coffee.

One the menu are dishes such as millets biryani, red rice served with banana flower, beetroot juice and almond milk.

Dune has four category of rooms. The first are the non-air conditioned bungalows which are big, spacious huts built with natural materials like coconut leaves. Then there are the deluxe air conditioned cottages and bungalows, followed by the suites. The top most category are independent villas with private swimming pools.

Each room comes with a room book which is like a hotel directory but it explains all that the resort does in terms of being ecologically sensitive. “We encourage our guests to follow some of our practices when they go back home,” says Klein.

Eighty per cent of the guests at Dune are Indians with a majority from Bangalore and Chennai. “We are in India, why should we be a hotel for foreigners. When we are full of foreigners, I get depressed,” smiles Klein.

While a few guests come for a quick weekend getaway, there is a large percentage that comes for specific spa treatments for between 1 week to 5 weeks. The detox and rejuvenation packages are the most popular, though there are several disease management packages as well.

“With our association with Deepak Chopra we are going to offer the Perfect Health package, the most popular package of the Chopra Healing Centre. This is offered as a 7 day and a 14 days package. All inclusive it is for between $2000-4000 for two weeks. It has two treatments a day, yoga and meditation, plus teaching every day and of course all meals and stay,” explains Klein. The package is meant for those who want to de-stress.

Klein was in talks with Deepak Chopra for over a year and a half as he wanted the Chopra Healing Centre to open at Dune. Chopra will be sending a group of therapists to Dune to coach and train the therapists there. A group of researchers will also be visiting Dune.

Klein is the managing director of the Dune Eco Group which has six hotels under its umbrella. Besides the Dune Eco village and Spa in Pondicherry, the others are in Tanjore, Kodaikanal, Kochi and Sri Lanka. The latest addition is the Dune Mansion which will open in Pondicherry in September.