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From the plot of a hotel or a restaurant to the planning of the rooms within the structure and the placement of objects within each room, several factors need to be considered to bring permanent prosperity into the business. By Mitali Bajaj

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Mitali Bajaj

Vaastu plays a crucial role in inviting guests and bringing permanent prosperity into restaurants and hotels. Here are a few instances of incorporating the principles of vaastu into hotel and restaurant design:

  1. The plot for building a hotel/restaurant should have a square, rectangular, hexagonal, singhmukhakar, octagonal or circular shape. These shapes are considered to be profitable.
  2. Roads on all four sides of the plot are very auspicious
  3. Building should be constructed in such a way that more space should be kept open towards north and east
  4. The main entrance of the hotel/restaurant should be in north, north-north-east or north-east direction. If it is west then it should be in west, north-west, west-north-west direction but not in south-west.
  5. In the hotel and restaurant, preferably, the kitchen should be at ground floor in south-east or north-west zone. All electrical appliances like ovens, grinders and mixers used in the kitchen could be placed in south-east corner of the kitchen. Storeroom location could be in west or south of the kitchen.
  6. The arrangements in the room should be in such a way that the beds should be in south or west direction only so that he/ she sleeps with his/ her head in west or south only.
  7. Toilets in the rooms should be in north-west or south-west direction.
  8. Swimming pools, underground water tanks wells, etc, should be built in north-east side if possible.
  9. Water connections should be in south-west.
  10. The air conditioner plants should be placed and operated from the south-east direction only.
  11. Elevators should be placed in the south zone.
  12. Store rooms should be ideally placed in south-west direction.
  13. Kitchens should be in the south-east or north west direction.
  14. The cash counters should be made such that the person who sits at that particular designation should face the east or north direction.
  15. The north-east portion of the hotel/ restaurant should be kept clean or incorporate some water source or fountain over that place.
  16. The heavy/ tallest part of the building should be in the south-west zone.
  17. The second heavy structure in the south-east zone.
  18. The north-east direction should be lower and the south-west should be higher in terms of sloping.

Restaurant projects

Olive restaurant’s entrance is in the north-north-east direction. The north-east part is lower and the south-west part is higher. Negative vaastu seems to have a bigger impact than positive vaastu. We had to shut down two restaurants that were perfect vaastu wise due to other circumstances. The entry and exit locations are extremely important. The south-west entrance can almost ensure problems for the restaurant and hotel, conflict of staff and managers. North-east toilets ruin earning capacity.

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When we started, the restaurant – Out of the Blue (OTB) – had its entrance in the east, south-east and the toilets in the south-east directions. It didn’t prove beneficial for the restaurant because there was always conflict between partners and managers running the restaurant at that time. But later when the toilets shifted to south-west and the main entrance shifted to north-north-east, the restaurant picked up a lot. The vaastu consultant had said that the kitchen will attract people from the feminine gender and OTB has been receiving 60 per cent women and 40 per cent men for the past 10 years. The south-west entrance can almost ensure problems for the restaurant and hotel. While south-east toilets create conflicts and north-east toilets ruin earning capacity.

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In Le Sutra the entrance was in the east, and was shifted to north-north-east. A fish tank was put in the north-north-east direction which has proved to be lucky.

(The author is the founder and CEO of Dr Art+Design, the only Indian studio invited by the Mayor’s office in London for a closed door global conference called Art & the City)