By BW Hotelier K B KACHRU, Chairman, South Asia, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group was felicitated with the prestigious ’Franchise Leader of the Year’ award by World Franchise Congress, recently. The selection committee included top leadership of corporate houses including PepsiCo. The committee presented their shortlisted nominees from several diverse industries to Ernst & Young subsequent to which the Finalists were concluded upon. This award has been given for his pivotal role in establishing Carlson Rezidor as the largest international hotel company in India. Nilesh Mitra, Senior Director-Human Resources, South Asia, Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group also got an award of ’Excellence in Human Resources’ during this forum for his ability to manage the emerging talent strength across brands and leading transformation by building a culture of empowerment leading to high levels of ownership and strong performance. Photo: KB Kachru (third from right) with his award at the function held recently.
Read More
By Rashmi Pradhan TAJ HOTELS Resorts & Palaces opened its second property in Pune, The Gateway Hotel at Hinjawadi. The property marks the foray of PSC Pacific, a Paranjape Schemes (Construction) Ltd. in the hospitality segment. The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi Pune will be the 28th Gateway Hotel of the group and first in Pune. With an investment of Rs 115 crore, the 150-room property is under the management of Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces for a period of eight years initially. Farhat Jamal, Senior Vice President - Operations (West India) & Africa, Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces, informed that there are two Gateway Hotels in the pipeline; Ajmer and Corbett, to open soon. ’We are scouting for opportunities in metros and tier II cities. We are happy to bring the Taj brand of hospitality to a second location in Pune. The Gateway Hotel is the full service upscale brand of the Group. We are excited to be present in new emerging locations like Hinjawadi,’ he added. Spread across three-acre of the ten-acre of commercial area, The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi Pune is located in the heart of the IT corridor of Pune and off the Pune - Mumbai Highway. The hotel is easily accessible from the industrial areas of PCMC, Talegaon and is 45 minutes away from Chakan MIDC. Shashank Paranjape, Managing Director, Paranjape Schemes (Construction) Ltd. said, ’We are involved in the real estate business and hospitality is an obvious extension. The launch of The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi Pune is a significant milestone as we foray into the hospitality industry. We are delighted to partner with the Taj Group.’ Speaking about the target audience, Albert Rebello, General Manager, The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi Pune, said, ’We will be promoting the property as a leisure and business hotel. Its close proximity to the Blue Ridge Golf Course, Mall and movie theatre and local sight-seeing areas around Pune will make up for an ideal leisure getaway destination. We are hoping for an encouraging weekend business from Pune and Mumbai. The hotel is an ideal option for business travelers as well as guests looking for conferences and weddings. A unique offering would be the availability of night conferences considering the timing of the IT and BPO industry, a first in the city. The hotel offers more than 5500 sq. ft. of flexible meeting and event facilities.’ The F&B options- includes a cosmopolitan mix of international cuisine and authentic regional home-style delicacies at the all-day diner Buzz, savour contemporary Chinese and Thai cuisine at the Sian which will open soon or relax over a few drinks at Swirl the cocktail lounge bar. For the wellness seekers, Buzz offers an Active Foods Menu. As a part of the unique regional cuisine offering, The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi offers Maharashtra’s Varhadi cuisine at Buzz. The deli offers an exquisite selection of short eats, active chocolates, customized options of cakes, pastries and creatively presented desserts.- The hotel is equipped with a gymnasium, swimming pool, spa and salon and, a fitness centre. The author is Assistant Editor of BW Hotelier. Photo caption: (from Left to Right) Albert Rebello, General Manager, The Gateway Hotel Hinjawadi Pune; Shashank Paranjape, Managing Director, Paranjape Scheme and Farhat Jamal, Senior Vice President - Operations (West India) & Africa, Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces.
Read More
By BW Hotelier THE MALKANI Group of Companies has opened four-star business boutique hotel, T24 Residency in Mumbai. T24 Residency is targeted to the business traveler and is located near T2 International Terminal and combines facilities and a location that is suited for 'staycations' on weekends. Bharat Malkani, MD, Malkani Group of Companies, said, ’T24 Residency is a brand new type of hotel and offering, the first of it's type in India. The one rule of the hotel is that is has no rules except customization of the guest experience. The hotel comes with a DNA that will recognize your personal needs and evolve itself with every visit to ensure that your stay feels seamless.’ Unlike most traditional hotel brands that are unflinchingly stubborn when it comes to transforming, T24 Residency is focused to cater to what their brand philosophy has labeled as the needs of the ’Urban Traveler’. With this extraordinary concept, T24 Residency holds sway with a two’pronged approach to hospitality: Adaptability suited to the requirements of the ’Urban Traveler’ and added importance to next’level personalized service standards and facilities, Malkani added. The nine’storey property comprising of 55 rooms is divided into three categories: Executive Rooms, Deluxe Rooms and Club Rooms in order of ascending luxury. A spacious yoga centre, banquet and conference rooms with modern designs and a terrace swimming pool complement the needs and expectations of their patrons. The all’day restaurant, Toast ’ Bistro & Bar and TBD located on the eighth floor of the T24 Residency offers European, Thai as well as Indian fare and a huge variety of international and domestic spirits, liquors, wines and craft beer. Designed and equipped to give an unforgettable experience of hospitality while maintaining the consumer as their core fundamental, T24 Residency is already courting expansion with plans of many more franchises to be launched across India.
Read More
By Sudhir Pai FOOD AND Beverage outlets at five-star hotels are no longer the big draws they once were. Top hotels in India are now opening fewer in-house eating houses, as specialty restaurants mushrooming all across towns, are luring away diners and eating into hotel revenues. Today hotels are setting up not more than two restaurants each in their upcoming hotels since it's no longer viable to have more. With the increasing numbers of free-standing restaurants, footfalls are much lower for high-end hotels. Earlier, it wasn't uncommon to have five to seven restaurants in a five-star hotel, today, this isn't feasible. Non-resident guests who form the back-bone of a hotel’s specialty restaurant clientele, now find them less accessible and convenient due to issues of accessibility, security arrangements, and sometimes, even ambience. The threat from high-quality standalone restaurants is very real. Guests feel hotels cater to a more generic taste which is true, because in hotels, one has to cater to diverse international clientele and Indian travelers as well as local guests. Today, modern guests want constant novelty, new concepts and affordable experiences. Local standalone restaurants are making us reconsider the number of outlets we need to have in hotels. Hence city business hotels do not opt for multiple restaurants, a single restaurant in addition to a coffee shop is the right combination. With the increase in business from meetings, incentive, conference and exhibitions (MICE), hotels are expanding their banquet space while reducing the number of restaurants. City hotels specialise in large conference and MICE businesses. The large banquets have capacity to hold large product launches, high profile company dinners and wedding segment is also growing. This gives a better profitability to hotels than running F&B outlet. Concept restaurants are going out of style for most hotels as younger guests want to go out and try something new. If we are in a city-centre, we prefer an all-day dining restaurant in the lobby with more choice of cuisines and smaller portions. This is because tier-1 city centers have more eating options. For hotels profit on rooms sales is much higher than in running a F&B operation as the overhead costs are very high. Nowadays, instead of opening a separate specialty restaurant besides the all-day dining, hoteliers are incorporating special cuisine like Italian or Chinese by including it in existing all day dining set up .They are hiring specialised chefs for these cuisines within the all-day dining outlet. These hotel chains are also reworking their F&B offerings. The all-day dining restaurants are slowly transforming to include specialty menu and dishes, which save the cost of building a separate restaurant. I feel today when we are conceptualising restaurants within hotels, one must factor in lot of points to make the food and beverage offering in our property compelling and profitable. It is understandable why many hotel operators would be skeptical about the success standalone hotel restaurants are seeing. For years hoteliers have experienced significant financial losses in the food and beverage departments of their hotels and many often consider food and beverage to be the ’necessary evil’ of their businesses. The cost of doing business in the restaurant outlets is significantly more than on the room’s side. F&B requires more people and labor to execute services than any other department in a hotel. The opportunity for theft, shrinkage and overall loss is exponentially more worrisome. Food and beverage requires more management, oversight and attention to detail. Gone are the days where a hotel restaurant must have the standard meat, chicken, fish, caesar salad and club sandwich. Food is exciting ’ fresh, local, seasonal and interesting. It is okay to do ethnic cuisine or use non-traditional meat cuts or cooking techniques. As consumers spend more and more time watching the Food Network and reading cookbooks, they are more willing - and frankly expect ’ to try new things while traveling. Why should we not provide this for them in the comfort of their hotel? Wine lists should no longer be heavy volumes dropped on the guest’s table while a sommelier stands by waiting to sell the most expensive bottle. Local wines should be served without the traditional high mark up making hotel bars more interesting. Cocktails should be well-crafted, delicious, and imaginative. Lounges should no longer be the place for single business travelers to sit down with their laptop and have a conference call, they should act as an epicenter of a hotel. Hotel chains are tying up with ’celebrity’ chefs and restaurateurs. If an hotelier and celebrity chef or restaurateur can become aligned on concept and basic offerings, suddenly the hotel can collect a monthly rent check and often a percentage of revenues from the third-party operator while the partner generates excitement and attracts and brings in new patrons. This works best when the hotel and restaurant operators have similar goals and can work together. The hotel often benefits from the marketing and PR from the restaurant and the overall positioning in the local market place. The hotel restaurant and bar scene will continue to evolve. Today we have the opportunity to create restaurants that provide a not-yet-realised need and make guests’ dining experiences memorable. The resulting word-of-mouth marketing that happy guests provide is priceless. Take a look at the restaurant in your hotel. Can it use an entrepreneurial approach to driving revenues and creating dynamic guest experiences? The author is Executive Chef, at the Holiday Inn Mumbai International Airport.
Read More
By BW Hotelier INTERCONTINENTAL HOTELS Group (IHG), announced its CDP1 results for 2015, achieving an impressive overall score of 98B2 for its Climate Change submission. IHG’s score was considerably above the CDP average of 84B and marks an improvement on its own score of 92B in 2014. The global roll-out of the IHG Green Engage system has been the main driver behind the company’s continued success. More than 4,900 IHG properties are now enrolled to use the system worldwide, giving them access to over 200 ’Green Solutions’ designed to help reduce their environmental impact. The easy-to-use online tool tracks hotels’ use of energy, carbon, water and their management of waste, along with associated costs. It also includes a carbon calculator based on the Hotel Carbon Measurement Initiative (HCMI) methodology, which allows IHG’s hotels to measure and report carbon emissions in a consistent and transparent way. Paul Snyder, Vice President of Corporate Responsibility ’ Environmental Sustainability and Public Affairs, IHG, (see photo) commented: ’We are very proud to have driven another significant improvement in our CDP score this year. The increase is testament to the work we are doing to ensure that every hotel in our global estate is up and running on the IHG Green Engage system, which drives significant benefits for both our hotels and the communities in which we operate.’ Alongside IHG’s Responsible Business Report3, the CDP is one of the primary channels IHG uses to report on reducing its impact on climate change, as well as to manage the impact of climate change on its own business. The CDP is specifically targeted at the investment community and covers governance, strategy, activities and performance.
Read More
By BW Hotelier BURBA HOTEL Network (BHN) and Horwath HTL - India, hosts of Hotel Investment Forum India (HIFI) announced that the 2016 conference will be returning to Mumbai in late autumn of 2016. The conference will be held on November 17-18, 2016 at the JW Marriott Mumbai Sahar. Jim Burba, President of BHN and host of HIFI, said, "Based on feedback from HIFI delegates, the dates and location have been changed to better serve the needs of the hotel investment community. We look forward to returning to Mumbai, the business center of India in November of 2016." "HIFI has been a forum to talk of the plans and prospects for the year, as it starts out. This discussion basis will continue in the changed pattern, enabling focus on market trends and initiatives that will help fine-tune budgets and plans for the ensuing year," said Vijay Thacker, Director, Horwath HTL - India and host of HIFI (see photo). In addition to the date and venue changes for the 2016 conference, HIFI is pleased to announce that it will be collaborating with Phocuswright to bring a slice of their programming to HIFI 2016. Phocuswright is the travel industry research authority on how travelers, suppliers, and intermediaries connect, and this collaboration will make for a unique addition to the HIFI program. In addition, HIFI will be collaborating with Phocuswright to bring a special HIFI session with key hospitality industry executives to the inaugural Phocuswright India conference, 21-22 April 2016 at The Leela Ambience Gurgaon Hotel & Residences in Gurgaon, India. HIFI is India's most important hotel investment conference. It is the annual meeting place for the leaders in the Indian hotel and tourism industry to discuss important trends, network, identify new opportunities, and do deals through a combination of plenary sessions, breakout panels, and interactive workshops. Planning meeting dates will be announced soon.
Read More
By BW Hotelier ACCORDING TO October 2015 data compiled by STR Global, hotels in the Asia Pacific region experienced positive results in the three key performance metrics. Compared to October 2014, the Asia Pacific region reported a 0.8 per cent increase in occupancy to 71.7 per cent, a 1.7 per cent rise in average daily rate to USD 113.50 and a 2.6 per cent increase in RevPAR to USD 81.42. India reported double-digit growth in both occupancy (+15.0 per cent to 62.8 per cent) and RevPAR (+13.6 per cent to INR 3,683.91). ADR in the country dipped 1.2 per cent to INR 5,866.47. Performance for the month was driven by a 19.2 per cent spike in demand’the highest in the country since March 2010. Daily data indicates Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays as the main drivers of demand, which is now up 10.7 per cent year to date. GlobalHotelReviewCC_Media_October_2015
Read More
By BW Hotelier TRIPADVISOR HAS announced its Winter Vacation Value Report, revealing the top 10 most popular international and domestic destinations searched for by for Indian travelers this winter travel period (Dec 1, 2015 ’ Jan 31, 2016), along with the average one-week costs for hotels, airfare and meals. The report also helps travelers discover winter savings at these destinations by highlighting the least expensive week to visit. For Indian travelers, Bali is the most popular international destination and Goa the most popular domestic destination this winter according to TripAdvisor search data. It is also interesting to note that destinations having colder climes are finding favor with the Indian travelers ’ Jaipur, New Delhi, Manali, Shimla and Agra all feature in the top 10. ’The cost of winter holidays can add up as people travel further afield in search of sun, snow or an exotic city break, but a winter trip doesn’t have to break the bank. Travelers can compare prices and book great deals on TripAdvisor, and if they are flexible with their dates they can save even more money by visiting during the least expensive week for the chosen destinations’ advised Nikhil Ganju, Country Manager, TripAdvisor India. ’Our research shows that while Indians prefer sunny places for overseas travel, within India colder places are equally popular along with beach destinations,’ he added.
Read More
