By BW Hotelier ANANDA IN the Himalayas, leading destination spa in the world, has appointed Gregory Ugrin as Director of Spa Training, Ananda in the Himalayas. Ugrin comes with rich spa expertise and a career that spans 18 years, which includes a deep foundation in neuromuscular therapy, luxury body treatments, and subtle energy work such as Reiki. A licensed massage therapist, Ugrin joins Ananda after 17 years of continuous service as a trainer and practitioner for Las Vegas’ premier spa retreat, Qua Baths & Spa inside Caesar’s Palace. Prior to entering the spa industry, Ugrin, a classically trained dancer, held a 15-year career in dance and choreography. He is passionate about integrating the best of modern therapeutic bodywork with ancient and holistic wellness sciences like Ayurveda, yoga and energy work. ’Ugrin’s expertise in both Eastern and Western luxury spa treatments is perfectly in harmony with Ananda,’ said Ashok Khanna, Founder and Managing Director, Ananda in the Himalayas. ’His expertise will ensure the continued growth and development of our award-winning team of spa therapists, and further strengthen Ananda’s reputation as the number one destination spa in the world,’ he added. ’I am humbled to take on the challenge of continuing the education and development of Ananda’s staff of spa therapists as well as bringing new incoming practitioners up to such high standards of excellence,’ noted Ugrin. ’It is an incredible opportunity to be charged with developing the next iteration of such an already impressive integrative spa therapy program,’ said Gregory Ugrin, Director Spa Training, Ananda in the Himalayas Gregory Ugrin is Nationally Board Certified in the United States for therapeutic massage and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Theater Dance from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA.
Read More
By BW Hotelier TAJ HOTELS Resorts & Palaces, which has one of the largest guest recognition programs in India, announced an all new Taj InnerCircle program with augmented features and enhancements, applicable across all brands globally. Members stand to benefit from an enriched array of opportunities including a series of unique experiences as well as a seamless point redemption process. The new program now also gives the option to members to give back to society by contributing towards altruistic initiatives by donating points. Chinmai Sharma, Chief Revenue Officer, Taj Hotels Resorts & Palaces said, ’We are excited to launch the ’reborn’ Taj InnerCircle program driven by valuable advice from our members. We feel most fortunate to have the guidance and counsel from our guests who have been loyal to Taj for generations. Our firm belief in the principles of Mutual Respect has guided us to ensure we demonstrate our loyalty to guests who are loyal to our hotels and to our colleagues.’ No blackout dates, easy redemption process with a myriad of opportunities ranging from accommodation, restaurants, spas and no expiry of points for active members are the basic principles of the reborn Taj InnerCircle. Taj InnerCircle will continue to remain committed to Giving Back to Society in the area of health and nutrition for under privileged children; Taj InnerCircle has empanelled NGO’s involved in this realm with a view to meaningfully assist. Staying true to its values and embedded commitment to community-Taj, through Taj InnerCircle program, will also match member contributions made towards this noble cause in the first month. Taj InnerCircle portal has undergone a major makeover which incorporates a friendlier user interface design, new website and app. Features include a calendar of partner events, gift certificates and an endless source of inspiration for point redemptions.
Read More
By Sanjay Vadhera ONE OF the biggest challenges for the hotel industry is the sheer scale of the operating costs. Heat, light and power are huge monetary guzzlers. Today we have the technology; there are ways to imbibe efficiency into this aspect of running hotels and bringing down costs, hoteliers just have to come in with an open mind. We started our business in Kenya with the setting up of the Kenya Organic Research Centre for Excellence (KORCE), a centre which handles all varieties of waste from municipal solid waste, plastic waste to even e-waste, converting this into energy. A similar process can be deployed in hotels, which produce massive amounts of waste that could be easily converted into energy to meet their in-house energy requirements. This particularly becomes vital when large three hundred or four hundred hotels have their occupancy to fall near about 40 per cent during the off season periods, which means that the overheads are not being recovered. This especially holds true for a country like India where because of the intensity of the heat you have massive air conditioning bills, coupled with those of cooking gas and other necessities. There needs to be a system that can cater to the hotel’s individual demands, without becoming financially taxing. This would ease the pressure on the hotel business. We need to bring in the technology, which is available to bring the waste under the power of zero-zero air pollution, zero soil pollution, zero water pollution and noise pollution lesser than four decibel points. One would believe that hotels do not really contribute to noise pollution but if one goes to the ancillary, service or the back of the house areas, this myth will be shattered. To combat these issues, we have developed a Dual Multi-Feed Reactor which, in layman terms, can be called a bio digester. This technology allows users to feed in any kind of waste, be it human waste which we call night soil, kitchen waste, etc. Everything can directly go into it and the best part is that it produces no smell and does not attract flies, which means that it can be easily accommodated with the premises itself. A single individual produces approximately 1.75 kilos of waste per day in a third world country and in the developed world the number is 4.5 kilos. This is all in the form of night soil, kitchen waste, food waste, disposables, etc. We in the developing world need to make sure that we adopt a program of waste management and damage control so that we do not reach the obscene levels of the developing world. These 1.75 kilos would in fact be more in hotels. All that needs to be done is that an ancillary area of half an acre or possibly lesser should be kept aside for waste management and the production of sustainable energy. This is something that is not too expensive or too difficult to do. To make things clearer, suppose we take a hundred room hotel, it can give almost about 80,000 cubic meters of biogas everyday day! Talk about bigger ones and you can get much more. Biogas is a mixture of carbon dioxide and methane. Now carbon dioxide may be the damaging gas but the methane accounts for 96.7 octane of fuel and a separator unit can easily separate the two gases, and the methane can go directly to the kitchens. An advantage of this is that even if the chef leaves the burner on without igniting it, the kitchen is not at risk of being blown up as the moment the gas comes into the atmosphere it will turn into water. The left over carbon dioxide, being a cold gas, can be used for the hotel’s air conditioning. What is left at the end is solid waste with a less than seven ph value, which can be used as organic fertilizer for landscaping. When it comes to cost, the thumb rule of any sustainable energy is that it should not exceed more than six months of one’s total projected turnover. So it is not expensive and can start producing within fifteen days of installation. If desired, a fast start can be achieved by adding five trucks of gobar gas as a booster. The product is available and all that is required is that the service industry has to come in with a open mind. The heaps of waste that are dumped is pure energy thrown away. All that is required is recognition of its potential and the subsequent adoption of appropriate technology. The author is CEO and Founder of Greenergia Limited & KORCE. As told to Bikramjit Ray.
Read More
By BW Hotelier LUXURY TRAVEL is booming: high-price trips are the strongest-growing market segment worldwide, according to ITB Berlin and IPK International ’ The most popular luxury travel destinations in Europe are Germany and Italy ’ Most luxury travellers come from the USA and China More and more holidaymakers are spending heavily on the best weeks of the year. With a 48 per cent increase in the last five years, luxury travel has grown twice as fast as all other types of foreign trips, which grew by 24 per cent. This is the result of a special evaluation of the World Travel Monitor, which is conducted by IPK International and commissioned by ITB Berlin. Luxury trips were defined for this analysis as all short trips with spending of more than 750 euros per night and all long trips costing more than 500 euros per night. In 2014, the world population undertook 46 million international luxury trips. The market share of these trips rose from 3.9 per cent in 2009 to 4.6 per cent in 2014. A total of 172 billion euros was spent on international luxury travel last year. This means that for foreign travel every eighth euro was spent on luxury products. More than 1,000 euros per night was spent by luxury travellers from the United Arab Emirates, India, Kuwait, Brazil, Australia, Canada and China (in descending order). Turnover did not increase due to higher spending per person but rather from a rising number of travellers. Growth drivers were above all new customers in emerging markets, who moved up into the luxury travel segment, or those who returned to the luxury market after the crisis, such as travellers from the USA. The largest source markets for luxury travel are the USA, with 9.2 million foreign luxury trips, and China, with 6.9 million. Other major source markets are Japan, Canada and Australia. In Europe, most luxury trips are undertaken by the British, with 1.5 million, ahead of the French and the Germans. The largest growth rate was in the number of luxury trips undertaken by the Chinese, followed by the USA, Canada, Taiwan, Korea and the UAE. Russia also showed strong growth until 2013 but the figures declined last year. The luxury travel markets in Japan (-20 per cent), Mexico and Scandinavia also dropped back. The most popular luxury travel destination by far was the USA, with 6.2 million trips, ahead of China and Mexico. In Europe, Italy and Germany share first place with 2.2 million luxury travel visitors each, ahead of France and Great Britain. The highest increases in the number of luxury travel stays were registered in recent years in the USA and Germany, followed by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Japan and South-East Asia. The Caribbean and New Zealand also showed very positive trends in the high-price market. Holidays abroad represent the dominant share of all luxury trips with 74 per cent. The most popular types of luxury holidays are tours, with 29 per cent, followed by city trips, beach holidays and cruises. The remaining 26 per cent of luxury trips are on business, with Meetings, Incentives, Conventions and Events (MICE) as the travel purpose for most of these trips. For luxury travel planning the internet is used far more than on average. But only for information purposes. Half of all luxury travellers book their holiday through a travel agent, which is a much higher share than for other travellers. Dr. Martin Buck, Messe Berlin’s Director of Travel & Logistics, commented: ’Many travellers define luxury differently today to previously. Instead of magnificent hotel furnishings or so-called ’bling-bling’, an experience that is priceless in its own way can be enormously valuable. Luxury today means unique experiences combined with the highest levels of comfort and individual services. An increasing number of people are ready to spend a lot of money for quality. The international travel industry has responded to this trend and is profiting from the growing number of travellers who want to enjoy luxury again after financially turbulent years. The real luxury, as the results of our Luxury Lab at this year’s ITB Berlin showed, is having time.’ Alongside special evaluations of IPK International’s World Travel Monitor, ITB Berlin also publishes the core data of the World Travel Monitor, including the assessments of some 50 tourism experts from more than 20 countries, in the ITB World Travel Trends Report 2015/16 in early December. The final results of the World Travel Monitor for the entire year, as well as the latest forecasts for 2016, will be presented at the ITB Future Day of the ITB Berlin Convention by Rolf Freitag, president of IPK International. The World Travel Monitor is based on the findings of representative interviews carried out every year with more than 500,000 people in over 60 travel markets worldwide. It has been conducted regularly for more than 20 years and is recognised as the largest continuous survey examining global travel trends.
Read More
By Sourish Bhattacharyya CECILIA OLDNE remembers the time she first joined Sula Vineyards eight years ago, she would go abroad and somehow convince people in the trade to taste the wines she represented, and they would do it just to oblige her, with no intention of buying a drop, or to savour the novelty of sipping a different kind of wine. No one really cared for an Indian wine. The tide has turned ’ and how! Cecilia’s problem today is not how to find a market for Sula’s wine portfolio, but to get enough wine to service the demand. ’People from around the world today contact us on their own and ask for our wines,’ Sula’s Global Brand Ambassador said a day after she presented a selection of wines distributed by Sula’s imports business at the Pan-Asian restaurant in Sheraton New Delhi. Unsurprisingly, Jamaica is the latest international market to be covered by Sula’s international footprint of 30 (and counting!). Australia is next in the queue, even as UK, powered mainly by Marks & Spencer, becomes the wine label’s second biggest market after India, followed by Germany, Japan, U.S.A. and Holland. And in Dubai, ’orders have tripled over the past year’. Cecilia wasn’t overstating her case when she said, ’I have never seen so much interest being shown in Sula’s wines.’ A Swede who has lived and worked in Stockholm, London, Cape Town and now Mumbai, Oldine has her hands full with another successful Sula business vertical, namely, Sula Selections, which is the import arm of the country’s wine industry leader. Its portfolio encompasses the Remy Cointreau brands, Japan’s Asahi beer, Sierra tequila and the whiskies of William Grant & Sons, which it represents in westen India and Odisha. The vertical got all the attention it could have asked for when it got Australia’s down-to-earth pace-bowling legend Glenn McGrath over to promote the cause of Hardy’s, a wine label that the retired cricketer endorses and is now the official pour of the England and Wales Cricket Board. It is now pacing itself to expand its offerings by getting more Ruffino labels from Tuscany and a Limited Edition of the Stamp of Australia series of Hardy’s as well as two rising international favourites. One of them is Mud House, a New Zealand label that draws its reputation from grapes grown in the three wine-growing regions of the South Island: Marlborough, Central Otago and Waipara Valley. Sula Selections is tapping Mud House for its Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir. In a couple of months, it is also sealing a deal with Kumala, a South African wine label famous for the gecko on its label and for being one of the fastest-growing wine brands in the world. In Cecilia's words: ’India should not be missing out on brands that the world loves.’ All that Sula has to do now is get its Selections always right. The author is Consulting Editor of BW Hotelier.
Read More
By BW Hotelier MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL Asia Pacific (APAC) announced today that Simon F. Cooper, President and Managing Director of Asia Pacific, will retire at the end of the month and Craig S. Smith, currently President of Marriott International Caribbean & Latin America (CALA), succeeded Mr. Cooper on June 1, 2015. ’During an impressive and well-traveled career, Simon has been widely known as an influential leader in the hospitality industry,’ said Arne Sorenson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Marriott International. ’His leadership has been instrumental in the globalization of Marriott’s operations ushering in an exciting chapter of growth at our company.’ Cooper led the operating performance and growth of Asia Pacific. By the end of the year, Marriott International plans to surpass one million rooms worldwide. Within the next four years, the Company also expects to more-than-double its size in Asia. In the region, Marriott International is represented by nine lodging brands, including BVLGARI, The Ritz-Carlton, JW Marriott, Marriott, Renaissance, Autograph, Courtyard, Fairfield and Marriott Executive Apartments. ’These past few years have been tremendous. Not only did our APAC presence grow at an impressive rate but it has been wonderful to see the positive effect Marriott has had on the region’s development. It was very meaningful to end my tenure with a visit to the Marriott Yao Foundation Hope School in the Sichuan Province of China. The school’s goal is complementary to ours: Opening doors to a world of opportunity,’ said Cooper. ’I have no doubt that Craig will continue Marriott’s success in the region while making sure that the company stays true to its core values.’ As President of the Caribbean & Latin America region, Smith was responsible for more than 90 hotels in twenty-five countries. Since assuming the role in 2012, Smith and his team positioned the region for exciting growth that is projected to include adding 14,000 jobs and over 70 additional properties across 10 lodging brands in 26 countries and territories by 2017. Smith has previously worked in Hong Kong serving as Chief Operations Officer for Marriott International’s APAC region. At that time he was responsible for 150 hotels, which generated in excess of US$3.5 billion in revenue. Under his leadership, market share improved by over fifteen percent in just three years. Smith has also served as Area Vice President for South East Asia and Hong Kong/Macau, and was Area Vice President for India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia. ’I’m looking forward to returning to Asia. A lot has changed since I moved from APAC to CALA and I’m excited to return to the region while it is going through this incredible expansion,’ said Smith. ’Asia Pacific is integral to Marriott International achieving its objective of becoming the world’s favorite travel company.’ Smith is a great proponent of knowledge sharing and an avid user of social media. He tweets daily and contributes monthly to LinkedIn’s Pulse and Overheard@Marriott. His articles relate to learning and using what we learn to better ourselves, creating measurable goals, and accountability, as well as other business, leadership and self-development issues. Smith’s writing is candid and encourages the reader to commit to self-improvement, both at the office and at home. ’CALA and APAC have a surprising number of shared traits but in many ways they are worlds apart,’ said Smith, ’It’s a wonderful opportunity and a huge challenge following in Simon’s footsteps. I’m very much looking forward to building on his success. I am truly standing on the shoulders of a giant.’
Read More
By BW Hotelier GAURAV BHUSHAN has been appointed Chief Development Officer at AccorHotels. In this capacity he will report directly to S-bastien Bazin, Chief Executive Officer of AccorHotels, and will continue to be directly responsible for the development of the Asia Pacific region under Michael Issenberg, Chief Executive Officer of HotelServices Asia Pacific. The appointment is effective from 1 July 2015. He will succeed Christian Karaoglanian who, after 40 years with the Group and in full agreement with Group management, has decided to pass on the baton. Christian will be on hand during the transition to help Gaurav Bhushan set out the new organisational arrangements. From January 2016, Christian will act as Adviser to the Chairman. He will continue to represent the Group in the various Executive Boards and will be responsible for specific dossiers. Gaurav Bhushan has an MBA from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Applied Finance & Investments from the Securities Institute of Australia. He began his career with AccorHotels in 1995 in Australia, where he held various posts in operations and finance. In 2000 he took up his first development post as Business Development Manager for Australia and New Zealand. He was then appointed Chief Development Officer for Australia, New Zealand and Japan and extended his area of responsibility to become VP Development for North Asia and the Pacific in 2004. Since 2006, Gaurav Bhushan has headed the Asia Pacific development teams and coordinated the development of joint ventures and partnerships in the region. It was in this capacity that he was able to secure the acquisition of Mirvac Hotels & Resorts in Australia and New Zealand and, most recently, the alliance with Huazhu in China.
Read More
By Simar Singh INTERNET CONNECTIVITY has become an integral part of the hotel experience. This is-particularly important when hotels have to meet the demands of two major target demographics- the traditional business traveller and the tech-savvy millenials. Wi-Fi has now become one of the primary considerations along with service. And clearly this is something hotel chains are taking seriously. HotelWiFiTest, a website which globally aggregates and assesses the Wi-Fi across hotels recently published a report on the quality of the Wi-Fi in hotel chains. Ranking major hotel groups based on two considerations of the quality of Wi-Fi and whether the in-room Wi-Fi is free for all guests, the report recognises the realty of global inequality or differences in the internet related infrastructural capabilities and has hence expressed the individual ratings against the consideration of the percentage of hotels that offer adequate Wi-Fi quality in a given geographical enclave. In Asia, HotelWiFiTest places InterContinental, Oberoi and Marriott at the top of the table and ibis (which actually ranks 5th in the world top 10), Favehotel and Aston Archipelago at the bottom of the fifteen hotel groups in the region that the study considered. Adequate Wi-Fi, as claimed by the report, is said to exist only if it is able to provide a download speed of at least 3 Mbps (Netflix’s recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (Skype’s recommendation for non-HD high quality video calls). In this report, a hotel judged as having adequate Wi-Fi must provide an expected download speed of at least 3 Mbps (the Netflix recommendation for SD-quality streaming) and an upload speed of 500 kbps (the Skype recommendation for high-quality non-HD video calling. What is actually interesting is that it seems that the better the Wi-Fi quality, the lesser the percentage of hotels providing free Wi-Fi is. For instance, the top performing InterContinental boasts an impressive 87.5 per cent in Wi-Fi quality and 42 per cent in free Wi-Fi while Aston Archipelago, which sits right at the bottom of the ranks, conversely, has been graded 28.6 per cent for its quality but 84.8 per cent for its free Wi-Fi. Shantha De Silva, Head Of South West Asia, IHG told BW Hotelier, ’Findings from our 2015 Trends Report reveals our guests value online social activity and online sharing when they travel. They want to be connected to a network, and they want to be able to do that across multiple devices. That is why we were the first international hotel company to announce free internet for our 86 million IHG Rewards Club members across our hotels globally,-whether they are dropping in for a cup of coffee or staying the night’. The Oberoi Group’s Senior Vice President of Corporate Information Technology, Rajesh Chopra, said, ’Wi-Fi internet is a basic need and is the most important technology touch point as it enables our guests to connect with rest of the world during their stay with us. It is always our endeavour to use new generation, state of the art Wi-Fi access points, authentication systems and ample bandwidth to facilitate secure and speedy connectivity,’ adding that the service was regularly audited to make sure it remained trouble free and consistent. Marriot’s Asia-Pacific (excluding China) Senior Director Ashish Kale told us about their Global Property Network Standard (GPNS) to ensure consistency and seamless browsing across their properties and within all areas of any property. He described it as ’corporate standards’ which were essential to ensure that their guests were never inconvenienced. Marriott is in the top three when it comes to their Wi-Fi provision according to a recent study. The report stipulates that, ’The chain to which a hotel belongs to is one of the best predictors of Wi-Fi performance.’ This makes the report an important brand selection tool for people who believe that Wi-Fi is essential for their travels. The full report can be found at- https://www.hotelwifitest.com/reports/271656/
Read More
