Capitalising on a vibrant city that is making the most of the Make in India initiative, Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad is setting new benchmarks in the local hospitality landscape, using innovative solutions to counter challenges like liquor prohibition. By Steena Joy
The Sarkhej-Gandhinagar Highway, colloquially the S G Road, connects the city of Ahmedabad with Gandhinagar, the capital of Gujarat. It is a major artery of commerce and public transport, and is witnessing a major construction boom along it. International car and motorcycle showrooms including Porsche, BMW, Audi, Triumph, Jaguar, Land Rover, Range Rover, Nissan, Volvo, Toyota, Rolls-Royce, Harley-Davidson, Honda, Skoda and Mercedes are located along this highway. On this road one will also find Gujarat’s tallest commercial hub Shapath V (70 m height) and nestled in this hub is the city’s latest hospitality entrant, the Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad. This is the only Crowne Plaza in Gujarat (there is one in Bengaluru and one in Kochi) and Crowne Plaza Adyar Park in Chennai (earlier the ITC Sheraton Park Hotel & Towers) will soon be added to the portfolio.
Vini Gupta, general manager, Crowne Plaza Ahmedabad, informs, “Most of the corporate business is on this side of town so the hotel is in a strategic location. This hotel was originally built as a Crowne Plaza property but when it was about to open, the deal didn’t work out and it opened as the Shiva Hotel which is the owning company’s name. Then after two years it was rechristened as Crowne Plaza. As it was originally designed as a Crowne Plaza, not many changes were required. The standards were already there.”
Commenting on the supply pipeline in Ahmedabad, Gupta opines, “Demand has not kept up with the supply in this market. But in the last two years lots of hotels have come up. It will take a couple of years for this new supply in the market to settle down. But the positive thing is that the growth of demand has been at 14 per cent year-on-year.” He adds that India is changing and pushing itself to meet world standards. “However, the hospitality market here is still very labour intensive. Technology is still a challenge because of costs,” he says.
Local challenges
Nearly 50 per cent of the hotel’s manpower is sourced locally. So are they able to match IHG’s international standards in language skills and guest interaction? “Ahmedabad is changing with five star brands entering the scene so this will definitely help in driving up standards. Another thing to remember is that in an orthodox market like Gujarat, family traditions are slightly different. It restricts you in certain areas like in case of employing women. But we work closely with all the colleges here and try to do whatever we can. It may be difficult to fill in the senior managerial positions but we are managing. IHG has an excellent HR growth programme that includes orientation and on-the-job training. Interestingly, we have a good number of female employees and also five employees who are physically challenged,” informs Gupta. As for attrition, he says Ahmedabad is better than the rest of the country – 40 per cent as compared to the industry average of 150 per cent.
Environment is a major part of the hotel’s operations. “We are getting into CSR. We are already part of Green Engage, IHG’s online sustainability tool. We follow the guidelines like segregating waste, using LED lights, etc,” points out Gupta.
Giving details of the hotel’s room inventory, Mayuresh Deodhar, director of sales and marketing, informs, “We have 200 rooms – 160 Deluxe rooms, 24 Club rooms and the rest are Junior suites and one Presidential suite. For MICE, we have 10,000+ sq ft of meetings space (theatre style 450 pax up to 650 pax), a 5400 sq ft ballroom (one of the largest in the city), two boardrooms and four meeting rooms. We have outsourced our spa to Sohum Spa – we are trying to work out a tie up with them so that we can have Sohum Spas in all Crowne Plaza properties in India.”
The hotel’s main competitors are Courtyard by Marriott, Novotel and Hyatt. “ There are approximately 550 rooms in Ahmedabad. Our main feeder markets are the Sanand Industrial belt, Prahlad Nagar Corporate road (where the IT companies and SMEs are located) and pharma companies (most of them are in this area). The city does not have a leisure market. The major segments are corporate individual travellers and residential banquets. We have huge weddings at the hotel, more like destination weddings where guests stay on an average of two to three nights (300 to 700 people). We have sold all wedding dates till June 2016,” adds Deodhar.
Another advantage is that the big event venues are also located in this area like Karnavati, YMCA, Andaz, Rajpath, etc so people can stay at the hotel and have the ceremonies at these venues. “And with events like Vibrant India, Plast India, Pravasi Bharati occupancies have increased by 10 per cent over last few years. The ARRs are competitive, as there is pressure on the rates and competition is high. Two more projects will mean more business – the World Trade Centre coming up in Gandhinagar and Gujarat International Finance Tec-city (GIFT), a financial hub expected to open soon,” Deodhar points out.
Besides as part of the Make in India initiative, Honda is setting up a two wheeler plant, the largest in Asia expected to open in early 2016 followed by its four wheeler plant. A new company Suzuki Motors Gujarat is also being set up. “Being a sea port makes exports easier. So there is going to be a lot of manufacturing activity in this area. We already are seeing a lot of Japanese guests,” he adds.
Innovative flavours
As for F&B, there are prohibition challenges to counter. “We do lose MICE groups due to the prohibition. But the good news is that since last year, the state government has allowed hotels to give guests a permit so that they can at least drink in their rooms. We expect to get the permit soon,” informs Deodhar. Chandrashekar Subudhi, director, F&B, explains that the hotel tries to work around the challenge by serving non-alcoholic wines. “We use two different companies Eva from Spain and Gustavo which have white as well as red wines. Eva is a sparkling wine made from pomegranate and grapes. These are non-alcoholic fruit wines with no fermentation (no yeast used for the maturing). So there is no bubble in it but only a wine connoisseur would feel the difference. We also serve Bavaria which is a non-alcoholic beer from Holland,” explains Subudhi. He adds that IHG also has the Bar 150 concept (150 varieties of IHG recipes for cocktails and mocktails).
The hotel offers live music during the Sunday Brunch, a 24 hour tea lounge attached to the all day dining and midnight meals especially during Navratri. In the hotel’s kitchen, executive chef Amit Gera tantalises the taste buds by creating inhouse versions of fusion cuisine like gulab jamun cheesecake. “We have seven culinary ambassadors including Vikas Khanna, Dean Brettschneider, Ian Kittichai, Ross Lusted, Sam Leong, Takagi Kazuo and Theo Randall. Everyday one recipe of these chefs is served during dinner and lunch at the hotel’s all day dining,” says Chef Amit. He likes to experiment but says that fusion is fine as long as it does not tamper with authenticity. “I use micro basil, micro beetroot, micro spinach and mustard greens all grown inhouse. I even use mustard soaked pears (Italian food moustard). I didn’t get this locally so I made it inhouse,” he adds.