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The hospitality boom

A slew of new top-of-the-line hotels is set to change Chennai's hospitality landscape. MEERA MOHANTY reports

Chennai's buzzing. Retail's booming. While Bangalore whines about infrastructure lag, Chennai is quietly planting one IT park after another along its IT corridor. The Americans were here already, the Koreans too, and now the French and the Finnish have joined them. The city's partying hard and has its own Page Three to record the good times.

So why should the hotel industry be left behind?

Taj is readying its new 200-room Taj GVK on Club House Road. The Leela is coming to town. Ceebros, which has only recently ventured into the hospitality business with the hugely successful Raintree, will offer one more hotel to the city. ITC Welcomgroup will bring in the Grand Chola.

But if anyone had any doubt about the city's hospitality before this sudden explosion, N. Prakash, Director-Sales (South), Taj, reassures them that Chennai was never short of hotel rooms. In fact, he says, the city had rooms across various price marks for every kind of traveller from the counting-every-rupee backpacker to those checking out the exotica from five star rooms and air-conditioned tour buses.

High occupancy

"There's never been a hyper demand scenario. Two to three years ago, occupancy was at 65/70 per cent, in fact, occupancy has just reached 75/80 per cent in the last season. This is the right time to grow. There will never be a supply glut either, because Chennai is keeping pace with demand," says Prakash.

And if there is any dearth, the Leela will surely fill it, in lavish Leela style. With an investment of US $ 90 million (plus), the lady comes with the kind of large statistics appreciated here. Sprawled over seven acres of beachfront land, the 20-storey building is "inspired by the royal, opulent Chettinad dynasty." and is designed by the Californian firm, Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (WATG), which has to its credit or discredit the ostentatious Leela Palace at Bangalore and the Palace Hotel at Sun City, South Africa. To be constructed in two phases (260 + 120), the 380-room Leela will be ready by early 2008. And according to sources next to Leela, on a 100-ground plot at MRC Nagar, a 300-room J W Marriot has been planned. ITC's Grand Chola will rise in June on the eight acres opposite the SPIC Building in Guindy. The top of the line hotel will have 600 rooms.

As Prakash points out, the advantage here is that the buzz in Chennai is not just about IT and ITES. "Chennai has everything going for it. There's manufacturing, electronics and a fair mix of textiles and leather too, and all of them seem to be doing well. And compared to other cities, Chennai has excellent infrastructure."

But if most of the other hotels, including the up and running Marriot's Courtyard, indicate anything, it's that it's the business traveller who has truly arrived at the Gateway of South India, as Chennai is considered. Among the facilities and services the Courtyard chooses to highlight in its vouchers are laptop compliant safes, high-speed Internet access, foreign currency exchange, a travel desk, a business room and seven meeting rooms.

The Empee Hotels Ltd. has tied up with Hilton International, and will invest Rs. 184 crore in the project, designed by Wimberly Allison Tong & Goo (WATG) again. At the time of signing the MoU, the Hilton representatives mentioned Chennai's strong automobile industry. Keeping it just a 15-minute drive away from the airport, the promoters have definitely the business traveller's convenience in mind.

The Taj GVK will also be a business brand hotel, for the new age corporate. Raintree was built with the business traveller in mind. The second 250-room Ceebros hotel is also dedicated to the business traveller. Construction will start soon and it should be ready in twenty months. "It is mostly for the business traveller but will also be popular with the leisure traveller," says C. Subba Reddy, managing director, Ceebros. Even the Leela will dedicate approximately 800,000 sq.ft to the executive lady traveller.

It's only natural that the hotel industry has decided to pamper business travellers. As Reddy points out, "70 per cent of the business is brought in by them."

Even Radisson is tweaking its offerings. Twenty eight rooms are being upgraded into Business Club rooms with media centres to handle your tech complaints, free wi-fi and access to a movie library, and a round-the-clock business club lounge. The hotel is also adding 50 more rooms.

You may no longer find the long corridors lined with Tanjore paintings and massive statues. Now when you walk into the new hotels, you will be amidst crisp contemporary designs. Teak will be replaced by frosted glass, quilted satin by linen, every nook will be wi-fi, with tele-conferences on the menu, and Taj even promises exclusive services that it refuses to let its competitors copy.

In fact, says Prakash, "Taj's bullish not just about Chennai, but the entire South India. Plans are being chalked out simultaneously for second-tier cities with their own airports such as Tiruchi, Madurai and Coimbatore, which they believe, deserve their own 200-room hotels.

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