Kapil Chopra, CEO of The Postcard Hotel, wants to change how Indian luxury hotels are viewed. The former president of the storied Oberoi Group, Chopra announced the new brand in December, opening three converted hotels in the Goa region on India’s west coast. Postcard offers no set check-in/check-out hours and immersion in the local community.
HOTELS: Where are the gaps in luxury?
Kapil Chopra: Luxury hospitality in India was only opening in a few key sectors, like Agra or Goa or Kerala. We had not developed destinations. Even with the phenomenal growth in domestic tourism, the occupancy at luxury resorts was 90% foreign, 10% India. The aspirational Indian, now affluent, wanted to travel and was not getting an opportunity to travel domestically because she had the same hotels in two or three resort destinations.
H: How do you want to change that?
KC: With a new generation that wants to spend, explore and experience, we are at the right inflection point. India has much more to offer in terms of cultural diversity and even flora and fauna and geography. Our next hotels will be in Uttarakhand, located in the Himalayan mountains, in the Konkan Coast in a place called Prasi in Maharashtra state, and in Kanha, which is one of the biggest tiger resorts in India… Transformational experiences only happen in places very well-grounded in nature.
H: How do you manage doing business in Indian cities, such as land entitlements?
KC: Entitlements are very cost-prohibitive if you are in the cities, but in the resorts it’s much easier. In wildlife areas things take longer (to get approval), so we buy the land and work on licensing long before we start the hotels. In other areas we work in three formats: long-term leases, full strategic buyouts or we look at managing the hotels, but we try to avoid that since we want to invest in our own products.
Contributed by Debbie Carlson