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Nikhil Manccharam.
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The year has belonged to Starwood’s India operations, with a lot of new brands being launched. Punam Mohandas gets behind-the-scene for a closer look at the group’s activities.

Starwood is suddenly going to be seeing a fair bit of action in India; the Four Point Sheraton opened in Mumbai this June, the Luxury Collection was launched, four Westins are due to open in Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, and Gurgaon respectively - although they are currently seeing a bit of schedule delay.

“It’s an exciting development of hotels, it’s a win-win situation for all parties,” agrees Nikhil Manchharam, vice president, acquisitions and development, Starwood Asia Pacific Hotels and Resorts.

“This year is very exciting for Starwood in India; in these challenging times that we’re in, it’s a nice story for the group. As for delays, these are natural in a project; you have certain markets where conditions are set by the regulatory environment, however, in India you don’t have these.”

With 23 hotels across five brands in India, he says what they’ve found is that the partnerships they select is one of the most important parts of the intelligence that they do, because when partners respect the brand, the growth potential is relatively high.

However, in the case of the Meridien brand, which was acquired by Starwood in 2005, and early 2006 is when they started to take full ownership, it was only fairly recently that changes have been put into effect, and announced to the industry – an inordinately long time.

“Well, we did a repositioning for Meridien in Mumbai earlier this year, to communicate to the market what the brand represents today. There is a phase when you understand and assess what the brand has been about, and that is an analysis that does take some time, and what do we do with the revitalised brand going forward,” explains Manchharam.

“While building a brand is difficult, taking over one is also time consuming. Progressively, we’ve been able to develop the mindset of the brand, its European culture, and differentiating it within the Starwood portfolio. Today we are at a fundamentally good framework, fitting the brand to what the market demands are.”

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There are preliminary discussions on for the W brand in India; as Manchharam says, there are very few markets where the St Regis and the W can be represented.

The focus right now is on the key markets of New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, with perhaps a resort destination like Goa.

However, Chandigarh is a city that will soon see a Sheraton; Manchharam is excited about this market, which he terms as the ‘Gateway to the Punjab’ and is optimistic about the returns here: “Oh yeah, absolutely.

Chandigarh is a very interesting market. The population is small, but per capita income spend is among the highest in India.

It will potentially, in the near future, have international flights, there’s an industrial growth for this city as well. So if you put all those components together and then look at the supply in the market, which is only the Taj really, and ask is there a market for a Sheraton branded product in Chandigarh - yes, there is.

Across India, there are groups that are important, and the Punjabis are an important segment – weddings are a big part of their spend.”

Speaking of Sheraton, which is globally Starwood’s largest brand in terms of number of hotels, would he say that ITC had become complacent in developing and promoting the brand, and had not done as much justice to it as they could have? Starwood has spent a lot of resources revitalising the brand and cleaning up the portfolio, and plans to be consistent with the global strategy of the brand.

“I wouldn’t say its complacency in any way,” he says thoughtfully. ”Following the introduction of the Luxury brand, seven hotels were rebranded, and three remain Sheraton. Fundamentally, they’re very good products, good locations in their cities, well distributed around the country.

There were a lot of positives, which gave the brand a lot of visibility in the market. It’s been organic growth. When you look at cities and locations, the traditional CBD’s have moved out, that is a function of availability of land.”