By BW Hotelier SVENSKA Design Hotels, announced the appointment of Kushal Sharma as the General Manager of their property in Lokhandwala Complex, Andheri West in Mumbai.- Kushal succeeds Rupa Aggarwal, who proceeded on maternity leave after leading Svenska Mumbai over the last 3 years on returning from London, where she was last working with W Hotels. Kushal, who has over 13 years of hospitality experience, started his career as part of the pre-opening team of JW Marriott Hotel in Mumbai, after which he worked with the Renaissance in Kuala Lumpur and Marriott in Philippines and Malaysia. Upon returning to India he worked with Marriott Goa, before moving on to Zuri Whitefield in Bangalore, Radisson Blu in Agra and finally Crowne Plaza in New Delhi, before joining Svenska.
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By BW HOTELIER IN-an attempt to cater to a larger share of the Indian market, Lufthansa, which operates 67 frequencies in a week to and from India, has announced the global roll-out of its Premium Economy Class and Bangalore has become the first city in India to welcome its new Premium Economy offering. The new travel class is currently available on Bangalore-Frankfurt route on the B747-8 aircraft, and will be available from-November 22-on all routes flown by Boeing 747-8 including Bangalore, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Peking, Sao Paolo, Seoul, Tokyo-Haneda and Washington D.C. The new premium economy class includes 50 per cent extra legroom space both on-board as well as on-ground and offers double free baggage allowance to passengers. The special benefits on board include being greeted with a welcome drink, an amenity kit, water bottle and a power socket. The meals in this class, will be served on china tableware and a large monitor will be fitted on the backrest of the seat in front for entertainment. The passengers now, will also be able to access the Lufthansa Business Lounges prior to take-off against a nominal fee and the passengers booked in Economy class can upgrade to the Premium economy by calling the Lufthansa Service Center or at the Lufthansa travel agency partner. Also, a subsidiary of Lufthansa, the Austrian Airlines, that operates a fleet of 80 aircraft, including 11 long haul planes, has increased its offerings to meet the challenges posed by global competitors. The airlines which offers flights from New Delhi to Vienna is offering the passengers a choice of Austrian, International and Indian services. The passengers of the business class, can also choose among two international menus and two Indian main dishes while a ’flying chef’ on board creates a six-course gourmet menu on long-haul flights. The passengers will also be entitled to a selection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages like the Indian tea. The airlines will also offer a first of its kind ’Viennese coffee house’ which will serve Vienna’s 11 most popular coffees. Lufthansa which has previously launched its flagship carrier, A380 in India, on-November 8, in Delhi aims to continue its investment in new products and services in order to further increase their presence and offerings in India.
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By BW Hotelier IN 2013 DELHI welcomed the most number of Chinese tourists followed by Bangalore and numbers are only going to get better and better.- As India moves towards extending its new visa-on-arrival programme to tourists from 180 countries, Chinese visitor arrivals into India is expected to increase more than 30 per cent by 2023. Cities such as New Delhi, Bangalore, Kolkata, Jaipur, Mumbai and Chennai are expected to be amongst the most popular destinations for Chinese travellers., according to a comprehensive study into the Chinese traveller market, commissioned by the InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) and Oxford Economics, released recently. Titled-The Future of Chinese Travel,-the-report shows that favourable economic and demographic trends shaping the Chinese travel market are set to fuel huge increases in demand for international travel over the next decade. It reveals the opportunities this-growth-will present, as Chinese traveller preferences evolve towards long-haul, leisure-driven travel. ’More travellers mean more tourism spend and we can expect both from inbound Chinese travellers over the coming decade.-We know from the research that travel facilitation reforms can greatly impact the volume of travel into a country, and India's new-visa-on-arrival programme will be a key factor in encouraging more Chinese travel into this amazing country,’ commented Shantha de Silva, Head of South West Asia, IHG. ’The Indian government is placing more emphasis on enhancing its draw as a destination through infrastructure development, building up key tourist attractions and presenting a cleaner India through the national Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. We are also aligned with this goal through our-year-long pledge-to support the-Clean India campaign-and our continued growth which will bring even more high quality hotels to the country to help cater to the projected boom in Chinese travel,’-he added. According to the study, annual arrivals from China to countries across the world will total nearly 97 million by 2023 (an increase of five per cent per year). 88 million Chinese households will be able to travel overseas by 2023. The three key trends in Chinese travel which will emerge over the next decade, according to the study was a huge growth of long-haul travel’China will overtake the US, UK and Germany to become the largest source market for long-haul travellers by 2020; Chinese travellers will mix business with pleasure with nearly 62 per cent outbound travel being leisure-driven by 2023; Chinese travellers will spend more during overseas trips’growth is expected to be nearly 75 per cent in nominal terms by 2023. The study also stated that the primary destinations for Chinese outbound travellers would be cities’with over 85 per cent heading to major cities around the world. Access is key to attracting Chinese tourists’destinations with easier access, including simpler visa policies will gain most, which will mean more Chinese visitors to India in the decade from 2013.
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By BW Hotelier THE Ministry of Tourism, Government of India is setting up an Indian Culinary Institute (ICI) at Tirupathi with a Northern Regional Centre at Noida. The institute will offer structured regular programs of study specific to culinary arts leading to graduate and post graduate level degrees. It will organise demand driven certificate and Diploma courses, document and create data bases of specific Indian cuisines, commission studies and surveys of Indian traditional cuisines as well provide trained manpower support to existing IHMs and the Hotel Industry, according to information given by the Union Minister of State for Tourism, Dr Mahesh Sharma in the Rajya Sabha. The academic calendar of the ICI will include the regular programmes such as B.Sc. in Culinary Arts and Sciences, M.Sc. in Culinary Arts; Diploma in Food & Beverage Service Management; Short term skill/knowledge upgradation programmes and Skill & Competency Certification for practicing chefs, the Minister added. A technical committee is being constituted, with academic and industry experts to plan and design course structure basic and advance culinary studies. An international collaboration is also being explored, according to Dr Sharma.
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One of the most common queries I receive on my YouTube show is asking me why hotels adopt digital strategies last. Hoteliers analyze every channel of publicity and marketing, conduct audits and post mortems before realizing the true value of investing in digital strategy. Sometimes, they jump on to the proverbial ’bandwagon’ which others are already using.
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By Sourish Bhattacharyya MUMBAI’S celebrated restaurateur Rahul Akerkar has quit Degustibus Hospitality, the company he set up in 1996 to operate his hospitality ventures Indigo, Indigo Deli, Tote, Neel and Moveable Feast, and sold his minority stake to one of the two major investors he had brought on board in 2009. Akerkar, who’s known for his benchmark-setting inventive cooking style, said the decision felt like seeing your child grow up and leave home. A terse official statement issued from his side said: ’Rahul Akerkar is no longer involved in the day-to-day management or running of the company. He has transferred his shares to one of the majority investor shareholders.’ When contacted by BW Hotelier, Akerkar, who has stirred his restaurant to the World’s Top 100 in 2007 and Asia Top 50 in 2013, refused to delve into the background to what industry insiders describe as a bitter parting that had resulted from simmering differences for over a year with the other investor shareholders. All that he was prepared to do was look forward. ’I am not sitting idle. I plan to travel a bit, eat a bit. I am working on ideas, exploring options,’ Akerkar said. He scotched market rumours that he was opening a restaurant in Goa with his wife, Malini, who has been pillar of strength and fount of ideas ever since he returned home from America with the dream of launching his own restaurant. Akerkar admitted it took him a while to reconcile with the idea of quitting the company he had created and led for nearly 20 years. But he kept telling himself: ’Indigo is a brand I have created. I’ll go out and create another.’ The restaurateur had brought investors on board ’ namely, Naresh Chander Oberoi, the patriarch of Powerica, the leading manufacturer of Cummins generators, and three members of his extended family, travel services operator Sanjay Ramesh Sanghvi, and realtor/mine owner Yezdi Kekhasru Bhagwagar ’ when Tote, a fashionable banqueting space in the Mahalaxmi Race Course, Mumbai, was struggling for financial survival, which coincided with Indigo being hit by the slump in the restaurant business following the 26/11 terror attacks on Mumbai. Industry insiders say that financial matters were at the core of Akerkar’s friction with his investor shareholders. He sought creative freedom to raise the bar for the restaurants he had launched, but the investor shareholders were not ready to look beyond the P&L. Akerkar, it is said, was also made to go along with decisions, despite his opposition to them, such as opening the Andheri outlet of Neel, the high-end North Indian fine-dining restaurant at Tote. The outlet had to be shut down within a year. At the end of it, it turned out to be yet another instance of the pigeonholed artist rebelling against the moneybags. But it is impossible to bench Akerkar. Be prepared to see more of him in the days ahead. Sourish Bhattacharyya is Consulting Editor, BW Hotelier.
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By Sourish Bhattacharyya WITH HIS recent elevation as Managing Director of Landbase India Limited, Anand Rao, General Manager, ITC Grand Bharat, now presides over a 300-acre estate in the lap of the Aravallis where peacocks come home to roost. On this vast green stretch, the 104 suites of the showpiece ITC hotel that Rao heads sprawl across 14.5 acres and on the rest of the land sits the Classic Golf & Country Club, Jack Nicklaus’s first South Asian championship course divided into three nine-hole sections. Yet, Rao has an unbelievably lean staff of 190-200 people, of whom just 70 are on the permanent staff, managing not only the 100 suites (the four presidential suites are nearing completion), but also four food and beverage destinations, a 30,000-square-foot spa, and a plush convention zone that has already caught the fancy of corporate houses and families scouting for suitable addresses to host niche weddings. How does Rao staff this lean machine that manages ITC Grand Bharat like clockwork? As he explained to me during a guided tour of the property, Rao draws on his third role in the organisation ’ yes, his third hat is that of General Manager, Learning Services, ITC Hotels, which makes him the boss of the ITC Hospitality Management Institute (ITC-HMI), Manesar ’ to manage the luxury resort almost entirely with the help of the students under his charge. It is an operation run by two batches of ITC-HMI students ’ the juniors who perform the nuts-and-bolts tasks and the seniors who double as assistant managers ’ and they report to their respective department heads, many of whom are teachers of their institute who have been assigned to the hotel so that they can brush up their rusty real-world hoteliering skills. For the students, it is an unsurpassable work experience; for Rao, it is a way to keep his staffing costs and the number of permanent employees low, as he taps the passion of students, which more than anything makes up for their lack of experience. With an in-house talent pool, getting to run the resort may not be as much of a challenge for Rao as filling up the 100 suites and, eventually, the four presidential villas nearing completion. The 800-square-foot suites, each of which opens either on to a private dip pool, or leads up to a terrace, today command an average room rate of Rs 25,000 a night, which makes Rao’s task doubly daunting. To achieve desirable occupancies, Rao’s team is tapping ’a varied portfolio of segments’. To these different markets, the resort is being sold as a golfing destination, a wellness getaway, or a venue for corporate retreats and even niche wedding receptions. Rao will also target another important segment, which is increasingly attracting the attention of hoteliers. It consists of leisure travellers whose idea of a good holiday is a ’staycation’, or a break not very far from their place of residence. ’The layout of ITC Grand Bharat and the range of activities it offers are such that we let our guest set their pace themselves,’ says Rao. ’We believe in ’unhurried luxury’ and that’s what we are giving our guests at ITC Grand Bharat.’ Say ’hello’ to unhurried luxury before you return to the rat race after you leave the gates of the benchmark-setting luxury resort. Sourish Bhattacharyya is Consulting Editor, BW Hotelier.-
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Sourish Bhattacharyya THE Taj Group’s second hotel in Dubai is all set to open in that rapidly mushrooming part of the emirate dominated by the world’s tallest structure, Burj Khalifa, and now better known as the Business Bay. Taj Dubai will be the second Indian hotel to open in the city-state since June 2013, when The Oberoi, a 252-key property with a 31-story office block and the hugely popular Iris bar, announced its arrival in the same neighbourhood, offering the best views of the Burj Khalifa. It is also in this zone that the twin towers of the JW Marriott Marquis, the world’s tallest hotel boasting of 1,600-plus rooms and 13 F&B locations, loom into Dubai’s ever-changing skyline. Another neighbour of the hotel is The Dubai Mall, famous for its 1,200 stores, an Olympic-size skating rink and the world’s largest in-mall aquarium. A 296-room hotel, Taj Dubai opens with The Chambers, marking the uber-exclusive club’s first international foray, and seven F&B destinations. These include the all-day restaurant Tesoro, which has a distinguishing glass-and-metal conservatory with an olive tree, and will serve Peruvian cuisine in the evenings. The Elegant Elephant recreates the neighbourhood gastro pub atmosphere with its vintage-style decorations made from repurposed wooded drinks crates. And Bombay Brasserie, the London restaurant and celebrity magnet that the Taj Group has been running since 1982, will bring its brand of Indian fine-dining to Dubai after Taj Cape Town. The newest Taj worldwide, and the second in Dubai after the Taj Palace Hotel in Deira, is headed by Jason Harding, who was with the Armani Hotel at the Burj Khalifa till last year. In an interview with ArabianBusiness.com, Harding said the Taj Group was in talks with investors for potential hotel developments at the Palms (Jumeirah), Jumeirah Lakes and Sheikh Zayed Road. The Taj Group, Harding said, is also eyeing growth outside Dubai ’ notably in Abu Dhabi, Oman, Ras Al Khaimah and Qatar. Harding also hinted that the Taj Group will enter these markets not only with its marquee brand, but also its Taj Exotica (resorts) and Vivanta (four star-plus) lines. Interestingly, The Oberoi is also expanding its Middle Eastern footprint by first opening in Marrakesh (Morocco) in 2016 and then in Ajman’s Al Zorah development on the eastern coastline of the United Arab Emirates, where it proposes to open a 100-room resort on the 12-km waterfront by 2018. With the two Indian rivals in the hospitality space eyeing the Middle East for aggressive expansion, it may well happen that when you land in Dubai for the World Expo in 2020, you may get to enjoy the luxury of checking in at one of a slew of homegrown hotels. Sourish Bhattacharyya is Consulting Editor, BW Hotelier.-
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By Bharat Mitra ORGANIC India started off as a trading company in the earlu 1990s, their aim was to share the wisdom of India and Ayurveda with the world. When they realized the toll which chemical companies and intensive agriculture had inflicted on the Indian farmer, they realized their true purpose’to help start an organic revolution in India. Organic India is not merely a corporate entity it is a living ecosystem in the heart of the corporate world, where everyone is treated with love and respect, and everyone benefits, starting with Mother Earth. The most important essential thing about Organic India is how productive and holistic it can be and how the nature of this ecosystem can nourish everyone involved with it. One of our products which you would find in many hotel rooms as well as airlines (we are in talks with Lufthansa to serve it on their flights), is our tulsi tea. Here I must quote an article by Professor Marc Cohen, Professor of Health Sciences at RMIT University in Melbourne Australia: Modern air travel has opened the world. In 2013, over three billion commercial passengers took to the skies. Yet, travelling in a pressurised metal cabin 10km above sea level has its drawbacks. Travellers are subject to a wide range of physical, mental and emotional stresses, from the time they leave home until they arrive at their destination. A review of the hundreds of scientific studies of Ocimum Sanctum, commonly known as Tulsi, or Holy Basil, reveals that Tulsi is the ideal solution. Science supports the ancient wisdom behind Tulsi, and suggests that Tusli is an essential travel companion. Tulsi has a unique combination of antioxidant, anti-infl-ammatory, anti-microbial and other actions that combine to help the body and mind adapt and cope with a wide range of physical, emotional, chemical and infectious stresses. Tulsi’s unique pharmacological activity particularly helps address many issues faced by modern air travellers such as infection, fatigue, thrombosis, anxiety and dealing with restraint, noise, hypoxia, radiation, industrial chemicals and poor sleep. The beneficial effects of Tulsi have been demonstrated in numerous animal experiments and human trials have shown that Tulsi can improve general anxiety and stress scores, relieve symptoms such as forgetfulness and feelings of exhaustion and assist with sexual and sleep problems, according to Dr Cohn’s research. Kicking the travel bugs The Centre for Disease Control in the US currently list over 60 infectious diseases related to travel (wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/ diseases). Travellers are more prone to infections due to greater exposure to different pathogens and the immune suppressant effects of travel stress. Yet, recent research suggests that Tulsi may support the human immune system to fight off infections while at the same time suppressing many bugs. Bharat Mitra is Founder President of Organic India. As told to Bikramjit Ray.
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