Imagine a hotel brand with set limits and narrow focus, a brand that doesn't want to be all things to all people. Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, a five-star hospitality firm based in Mumbai, India fills that bill. Leela aims to have properties in 12 key India destinations by 2012, dividing them between business and leisure in order to capitalize on India's emerging middle class and the increasing globalization of business.

There are six Leela properties operating now, with six in the pipeline. Leela does not plan to expand outside India—at least not for now.


I visited the ultra-modern Leela Kempinski Gurgaon in suburban Delhi and the more traditional Leela Kempinski Goa in the resort state of Goa in mid-July on a trip designed to spread the Leela word. Because the Gurgaon hotel, Leela's only managed property, officially opened only on July 11, statistics on its feeder markets aren't available, but occupancy has been in the mid-70s since it opened soft in April, Leela executives say. According to Sanjoy Pasricha, vice president of sales and marketing for Leela, "We expect maximum percentage (of guests to come) from the U.S., followed by the U.K. and Germany."

At the Goa resort, a sprawling complex that opened in 1991, the greatest number of guests during the October-April high season come from England, Germany and Russia, says Jai Sreedhar, Leela's corporate director of leisure sales. Occupancy is routinely 85  percent to 90 percent, and on July 18, the resort was sold out.

"In India, leisure and business hotels are very distinct," Sreedhar says. "With the exception of Delhi, which is both a leisure and a business destination, all the other major cities in India, like Djaipur and Agra, are 90-percent leisure, and Mumbai (the business hub) and Chennai (the country's automotive "engine") are 90-percent corporate."

The Leela Experience
I spent three days each in Gurgaon and Goa; I spent a seventh traveling to and from Agra, where my band of journalists toured the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort, magnificent, mystical complexes from the 16th century. Small wonder Leela plans an outpost in Agra, but that's a few years away.

The hotels were very different. The Leela Kempinski Gurgaon offers 322 guestrooms and suites and 90 residences in one-, two- and three-bedroom configurations. Located in a mixed-use complex next to the Ambience Mall, India's largest, it targets the traveler on business linked to one of the Fortune 500 companies with branch offices in Gurgaon. This hotel is the first venture into northern India for the luxury Leela brand Capt. C.K. Krishnan Nair launched in the mid-1980s.

It is sleek, airy and sumptuous, its lobby perfumed and sensual, its restaurants diverse and smart. Spectra, its most striking eatery, is a particular delight, with gorgeous food stations, artful presentations and fine, varied cooking.

The guestrooms are oversize—sales and marketing chief Pasricha says they're about 45 square meters (about 484 square feet), about a third larger than in other Indian luxury hotels—and nicely appointed, with Wi-Fi Internet access, a rain shower showerhead, the requisite fabulous bed, and a soothing palette. Double-occupancy rates start at 7,000 rupees (about $145).


The security is palpable, likely because of the terrorist attacks of last November in Mumbai, where 160 people died. But the armed guards on some floors of the Leela Kempinski Gurgaon are less intimidating than reassuring and, like the ubiquitous staff, greet you with hands folded in the trademark Leela gesture, "Namaste."

The 186-unit Leela Kempinski Goa, where we spent the last three days, was a more conventional, getaway affair. Designed in Mogul style, it is a complex of broad spaces, easy marriage of inside and outside (a bonus in subtropical climes) and gorgeous period artifacts. I had my own suite—and my own butler, Bintedar.

He brought me afternoon tea and sweets, arranged for cart transportation to the Club where our band would meet daily for conferences on tourism, and on the next-to-last day, did my laundry, returning it in a wicker basket folded and pressed, down to the underwear. I miss Bintedar.

I also see why the Leela Kempinski Goa is offering a "monsoon getaway," a three-night, four-day package including outrageous service (there are 2.5 staff to each guest), breakfast for two and air-conditioned airport shuttle rides. Cost for the lagoon room category—Goa's most private and opulent—is 5,545 rupees per person per night, or about $115. The monsoon part—monsoons sound scary, but they're delightfully refreshing and torrential—is free. The offer's good through Oct. 15. No word on whether Bintedar comes with it.

Promises and challenges
Leela is the newcomer to a field including older, better-known brands Taj, Oberoi and Trident. It hopes to edge them out with extraordinary service and state-of-the-art technology appropriate in a country in which the biggest employer is information technology. In India, a third of the population of 1.1 billion is less than 15 years old, the annual GDP growth is 5.5 percent (making it the fastest-growing economy, ahead of Malaysia and China), and there's a middle class of 150 million eager for air travel, according to a presentation by officials of Lufthansa, the German airline that flew me and five other journalists to India and back business class.

According to Vivek Nair, vice chairman and managing director of Leela, the multi-leveled approval process a hotel project must undergo hampers development; it can take 12 to 20 months. In addition, "various benefits and incentives given to infrastructure facilities such as airports are not extended to hotels," leading to higher-interest loans with shallower pools of money and shorter terms. He notes that the government of India is modernizing the Mumbai, Hyderabad and Delhi airports, which handle about 75 percent of India's passenger arrivals, and also is working to improve India's roads (two- to four-lane now, and clogged) and telecommunications (frequent power interruptions in Delhi punctuate one's stay). Leela, he says, handles everything but design and architecture.

According to statistics provided by Lufthansa, India will be the third-largest economy in the world in 2050, behind only China and the U.S. According to Leela executives, the global recession has affected India, but its economy still is growing, so the opportunities certainly outweigh the pitfalls.

"India has a fair amount of domestic business as compared to other people," says Jai Sreedhar, Leela's leisure-business expert. "So although we are depending a lot on international economies gaining momentum and shedding of the recession, we are not entirely dependent on that."

Pace, too, is important to Leela, and labor—which costs about a quarter of what U.S. labor costs—isn't a problem, says Sanjoy Pasricha, Leela's top sales and marketing official. Word-of-mouth rather than a loyalty program based on points and rewards, along with an emerging, better-educated and young middle class, suggest that Leela will do exceptionally well offering an "anxiety-free stay," he says. Not to mention a portfolio that by 2012 will be the youngest and most modern in its class.

Freelance writer Carlo Wolff retired last year as features editor of Lodging Hospitality.