Taj Hotels, Resorts and Palaces is the 110-year-old lodging arm of Tata Group, the Indian conglomerate that is big in industries as diverse as cars, chemicals and steel, operates in 80-some countries and has nearly 400,000 employees. Big it is, old it is, with the parent company dating back to 1868, the hotels operation is looking forward, not backward.
This much was clear when I talked recently with Raymond Bickson, the chief executive officer of the Taj hotel group, at the opening of the Taj Cape Town, in South Africa. Hawaii-born and a long-time hotelier in San Francisco before joining Mumbai-based Taj, Bickson is outgoing, a good talker, and clearly enthusiastic about going global with the Taj brand, which is identified in India with luxury and sophistication.
What follows is an edited version of our conversation, with my questions omitted, to smooth out the narrative flow. Bickson started out with some thoughts about the Hotel Pierre, the company's U.S. flagship in midtown Manhattan, then expanded on a number of topics:
''The Pierre is the Pierre, and it's not a bad location. It's a great opportunity for us to be in the toughest marketplace in the world. We embraced the challenge of working with the people who live there, the owners of 77 co-ops in the building, and we spent $120 million USD renovating the property in 2009.
"We're a 110-year-old company, founded in 1901, and the longest-standing company in the Tata Group. We're part of a $71 billion industry today. We're opening one hotel every seven weeks.'' (At this writing, Taj has 66 hotels in India, 16 outside India, for a total of 82.)
"The Asian market today is really up, with 47 brands coming into India. Right now, there are 96,000 hotel rooms in India, compared to 110,000 in Manhattan. We're expanding to make sure we maintain our market share. We operate a 5-star brand with Taj, Taj Exotica resorts and Taj Safaris, 4-stars with Vivanta (stylish city boutique hotels), 3-stars with Gateway and 2-star economy hotels in India with Ginger.
''There are 25 key source markets in the world that we need to be in. South Africa is one of them. Tata Motors has been here 25, 35 years, and Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals operate here. Twenty-two million tourists a year come to South Africa. Johannesburg is the hub. Eighty to 85 percent of leisure travelers come here to Cape Town. If you're in Cape Town, you have to also be in Jo-berg - it sends you off to the game lodges and to Cape Town.
"This is the 'old town' of Cape Town. It's all within 10 minutes from here. It's becoming the new "old' district. November through Easter is the high season here. So far, we're doing 70 percent leisure travelers at the Taj Cape Town, 30 percent corporate. All in all, you want to see it balance out 50/50.''
Of course, Taj competes with other major hotel companies around the globe. In India, Oberoi is its chief rival. Internationally, Taj takes-on Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, Peninsula and a handful of others. All are expanding aggressively, along with Taj.
Bickson:
"We have two projects in Egypt, two in Abu Dhabi, a project in Beijing - a 60-suite property in the central business district. Also, we're going into Sydney, China Beach in Vietnam and Thailand - for us, it's the new Maldives. We have two properties in Maldives and we're in Sri Lanka.
"We're an Asian company. We're in Asia. With the low labor cost, we can have a higher ratio of employees to guests than you have elsewhere. The service aspect of Asia is really embedded in the DNA of this company.''
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts
Friday, February 11, 2011
Monday, September 6, 2010
Under African Skies
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - There are, of course, more than seven interesting things about Cape Town, widely held by travelers to be the coolest city in South Africa. Here are seven sights in the city and surrounds that caught my attention:
1. The Company Gardens: Once the vegetable and fruit patch of the Dutch East India Co., used to grow food for scurvy-ravaged sailors, the space is now a lush, beautifully landscaped public park and garden in the heart of the city. Set into one flank is the Parliament Building with its white, colonial-era statue of Queen Victoria just outside. The park is a lovely place for a daytime stroll, though visitors are warned not walk alone there at night.
2. Table Mountain: An obvious choice, towering dramatically above the city bowl and terraced hillsides, and often draped in clouds. It's a dramatic and defining element.
3. Outside the city-center, Chapman's Peak: It gives sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean, Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela and other heros of the anti-apartheid struggle were imprisoned) and the lovely seaside promenade below in a once-seedy area that has been cleaned up.
4. The road from Chapman's Peak: A twisty, hilly artery with phenomenal views, originally laid out as a dirt track in 1915. Traffic is carefully controlled and signposted. Coming down the hillside in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope, your eyes fall upon a 6-kilometer-long white sand beach backed with wetlands. Among other things, locals ride horses up and down the strand.
5. A sign in the car park at Boulder Beach, where the big attraction is Africa's most famous penquin colony: "Warning: Please look under your vehicles for penquins.'' The beach is part of the expansive Table Mountain National Park, on the fringe of the city.
6. A roadside sign in the scrubby, windy stretch of land on the road to the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco de Gama famously rounded in 1498 on his journey to India: "Baboons!''
There are many of these primates, skittering along the ground, sitting on top of fenceposts and wandering onto the road. Visitors are of necessity warned not to feed or touch them, as they are wild animals, not pets. One baboon that I and my group see along the roadside has a bloody tongue hanging out of his mouth. The guide from Roots Africa Tours (http://www.rootsafrica.za/) tells us this one has probably lost a fight and been expelled from his group. Further along, baboons overrrun an ostrich farm and create a diversion so that their fellows can steal the big birds' food.
7. The food and the singing at Two Oceans restaurant at craggy Cape Point, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. We feast on food heaped in iron skillets - rice, calamari, lobster, a white fish whose name I didn't catch, a good curry - and sit back, sated, as restaurant staff sing traditional African songs and demonstrate a dance. Decidedly touristy, to be sure, but well-done and enjoyable. The lunch is accompanied by excellent wines - one of South Africa's specialties. I sip a glass of a rose brut and sample a 2008 Hartenberg Chardonnay from the wine-growing center Stellenbosch, located an hour from the city in the Cape Winelands.
There may be something finer than drinking good wine at the ends of the Earth, but when you're doing it, it's hard to think of what that something could be.
1. The Company Gardens: Once the vegetable and fruit patch of the Dutch East India Co., used to grow food for scurvy-ravaged sailors, the space is now a lush, beautifully landscaped public park and garden in the heart of the city. Set into one flank is the Parliament Building with its white, colonial-era statue of Queen Victoria just outside. The park is a lovely place for a daytime stroll, though visitors are warned not walk alone there at night.
2. Table Mountain: An obvious choice, towering dramatically above the city bowl and terraced hillsides, and often draped in clouds. It's a dramatic and defining element.
3. Outside the city-center, Chapman's Peak: It gives sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean, Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela and other heros of the anti-apartheid struggle were imprisoned) and the lovely seaside promenade below in a once-seedy area that has been cleaned up.
4. The road from Chapman's Peak: A twisty, hilly artery with phenomenal views, originally laid out as a dirt track in 1915. Traffic is carefully controlled and signposted. Coming down the hillside in the direction of the Cape of Good Hope, your eyes fall upon a 6-kilometer-long white sand beach backed with wetlands. Among other things, locals ride horses up and down the strand.
5. A sign in the car park at Boulder Beach, where the big attraction is Africa's most famous penquin colony: "Warning: Please look under your vehicles for penquins.'' The beach is part of the expansive Table Mountain National Park, on the fringe of the city.
6. A roadside sign in the scrubby, windy stretch of land on the road to the Cape of Good Hope, which Vasco de Gama famously rounded in 1498 on his journey to India: "Baboons!''
There are many of these primates, skittering along the ground, sitting on top of fenceposts and wandering onto the road. Visitors are of necessity warned not to feed or touch them, as they are wild animals, not pets. One baboon that I and my group see along the roadside has a bloody tongue hanging out of his mouth. The guide from Roots Africa Tours (http://www.rootsafrica.za/) tells us this one has probably lost a fight and been expelled from his group. Further along, baboons overrrun an ostrich farm and create a diversion so that their fellows can steal the big birds' food.
7. The food and the singing at Two Oceans restaurant at craggy Cape Point, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet. We feast on food heaped in iron skillets - rice, calamari, lobster, a white fish whose name I didn't catch, a good curry - and sit back, sated, as restaurant staff sing traditional African songs and demonstrate a dance. Decidedly touristy, to be sure, but well-done and enjoyable. The lunch is accompanied by excellent wines - one of South Africa's specialties. I sip a glass of a rose brut and sample a 2008 Hartenberg Chardonnay from the wine-growing center Stellenbosch, located an hour from the city in the Cape Winelands.
There may be something finer than drinking good wine at the ends of the Earth, but when you're doing it, it's hard to think of what that something could be.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Ratan Tata on Terror
CAPE TOWN, South Africa - I came to this city of 3.5 million people to attend the opening of the new 5-star Taj Hotel Cape Town, a splendid, business-minded property that blends two renovated heritage buildings with a glassy new tower.
In the process, I heard unexpected words on terror and travel from a global business leader who knows about both. He is Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata & Sons, the huge Indian conglomerate that builds cars, makes steel and does a number of other things. Tata is a very big family business that started at the turn of the 20th century in what was then Bombay (today's Mumbai) with a single hotel: the Taj Mahal Palace.
That Taj was one of the Mumbai targets attacked by terrorists in November 2008 and partly destroyed. I stayed there a year later, while repairs and renovation were still going on and the original 1903 building was still closed to guests. It reopened last month.
In Cape Town for the opening of the new Taj, Tata had a rare meeting with reporters and spoke about the attack - and the determined response to it.
"We saw lives being taken,'' he said. "We saw the hotel burning. We decided to rebuild it brick by brick. It was an emotional time. We lost 31 people. We were able to overcome, and rebuild even better. It came out beautiful.
"It was a statement of defiance,'' Tata said. "You couldn't knock Bombay down.''
Amen to that. Continuing on in the face of menace - and taking precautions while doing so - is the only appropriate response to terrorists. Simply put, you don't let them win.
They couldn't knock Bombay down.
In the process, I heard unexpected words on terror and travel from a global business leader who knows about both. He is Ratan Tata, the chairman of Tata & Sons, the huge Indian conglomerate that builds cars, makes steel and does a number of other things. Tata is a very big family business that started at the turn of the 20th century in what was then Bombay (today's Mumbai) with a single hotel: the Taj Mahal Palace.
That Taj was one of the Mumbai targets attacked by terrorists in November 2008 and partly destroyed. I stayed there a year later, while repairs and renovation were still going on and the original 1903 building was still closed to guests. It reopened last month.
In Cape Town for the opening of the new Taj, Tata had a rare meeting with reporters and spoke about the attack - and the determined response to it.
"We saw lives being taken,'' he said. "We saw the hotel burning. We decided to rebuild it brick by brick. It was an emotional time. We lost 31 people. We were able to overcome, and rebuild even better. It came out beautiful.
"It was a statement of defiance,'' Tata said. "You couldn't knock Bombay down.''
Amen to that. Continuing on in the face of menace - and taking precautions while doing so - is the only appropriate response to terrorists. Simply put, you don't let them win.
They couldn't knock Bombay down.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
4:30
CAPE TOWN - Jet lag takes many forms, among them the sudden bolt of wide-awakeness that strikes at the most ungodly hour, when you are exhausted and should be sleeping soundly, but can't do it no matter what. And forget about going back to sleep once you have woken up.
On this trip, my first visit to South Africa, the wakey wakey moment has come reliably at 4:30 a.m. This is, of course, a most unfortunate time - both too early and too late to do much of anything - outside your hotel room, especially.
It seems I'm not alone. Fellow travelers in this beautiful seaside city - here for the opening of the 5-star Taj Hotel Cape Town - are having the same experience. And they're having it at the same time. The fact that the beds at the Taj are heavenly doesn't seem to matter in this regard.
Marion, a Philadelphia writer, attests she has come wide awake at 4:30. Chris, a journo from San Francisco by way of Atlanta, same thing - also at 4:30. Joe, a PR whiz from Palm Springs, California, also woke up when he didn't want to.
"When was that?" I asked.
"About 4:30," he replied, bleary-eyed.
It's something that's going around.
I love travel but it has its downside. The jet lag-inspired Big Wake-Up is definitely downside.
On this trip, my first visit to South Africa, the wakey wakey moment has come reliably at 4:30 a.m. This is, of course, a most unfortunate time - both too early and too late to do much of anything - outside your hotel room, especially.
It seems I'm not alone. Fellow travelers in this beautiful seaside city - here for the opening of the 5-star Taj Hotel Cape Town - are having the same experience. And they're having it at the same time. The fact that the beds at the Taj are heavenly doesn't seem to matter in this regard.
Marion, a Philadelphia writer, attests she has come wide awake at 4:30. Chris, a journo from San Francisco by way of Atlanta, same thing - also at 4:30. Joe, a PR whiz from Palm Springs, California, also woke up when he didn't want to.
"When was that?" I asked.
"About 4:30," he replied, bleary-eyed.
It's something that's going around.
I love travel but it has its downside. The jet lag-inspired Big Wake-Up is definitely downside.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Cape Town: First Take
CAPE TOWN - It's my first time in Cape Town, South Africa's oceanside gem, and I'm impressed. I'm still looking around, so I don't know the place yet, but the first thing that strikes a new arrival is the beauty of the city and the site. Driving into town from the airport, it reminded me of San Francisco, with houses spilling down craggy hillsides to the water. It's winter here, and the weather, too, reminds me of San Francisco: fog, sunny breaks, lots of wind, temperatures in the 50s and 60s F.
Bish Desmond Tutu's activist center, St. George's Cathedral, is directly across the street from my hotel, the new Taj Hotel Cape Town, which officially opened with a big party last night with Tata and Sons Chairman, the courtly Ratan Tata, on hand for the festivities. It's an unusual but successful amalgam of two repurposed historic buildings with guest rooms in a third structure, a 17-story glassy tower. An old banking hall is now the lobby and bar area. Just outside is St. George's mall, a pedestrianized street lined with curbside merchants selling African keepsakes and what we'll generously term art. Long Street, the city's main boho shopping and drinking street, is nearby. So, too, are the Company Gardens, the former food-growing area - now a beautiful public park - founded by the Dutch East India Company centuries ago. South Africa's pretty parliament building is located in the park, as is the country's attractive National Gallery. The dramatic outcrop of rugged Table Mountain looms over everything.
Walking around the city is generally safe in daytime - it wasn't safe even 10 years ago - and the city and nation still seem to be on a high from South Africa's successful production of the World Cup in June and July. There are, to be sure, many people just shuffling along or occupying park benches, with nowhere to go and nothing to do - a reminder of continuing poverty and class conflicts. Many public sector workers are on strike, protesting low wages, and this is not going down well with the public itself, as essential services are being disrupted. The Johannesburg Star the other day caarried disturbing reports of women forced into delivering babies outside the gates of struck hospitals, with no professional care. Scarey.
For travelers, things are still generally fine, and if you can spare the time and money, making a journey here is well worth it. I'm off on a wine safari today - just my speed.
Bish Desmond Tutu's activist center, St. George's Cathedral, is directly across the street from my hotel, the new Taj Hotel Cape Town, which officially opened with a big party last night with Tata and Sons Chairman, the courtly Ratan Tata, on hand for the festivities. It's an unusual but successful amalgam of two repurposed historic buildings with guest rooms in a third structure, a 17-story glassy tower. An old banking hall is now the lobby and bar area. Just outside is St. George's mall, a pedestrianized street lined with curbside merchants selling African keepsakes and what we'll generously term art. Long Street, the city's main boho shopping and drinking street, is nearby. So, too, are the Company Gardens, the former food-growing area - now a beautiful public park - founded by the Dutch East India Company centuries ago. South Africa's pretty parliament building is located in the park, as is the country's attractive National Gallery. The dramatic outcrop of rugged Table Mountain looms over everything.
Walking around the city is generally safe in daytime - it wasn't safe even 10 years ago - and the city and nation still seem to be on a high from South Africa's successful production of the World Cup in June and July. There are, to be sure, many people just shuffling along or occupying park benches, with nowhere to go and nothing to do - a reminder of continuing poverty and class conflicts. Many public sector workers are on strike, protesting low wages, and this is not going down well with the public itself, as essential services are being disrupted. The Johannesburg Star the other day caarried disturbing reports of women forced into delivering babies outside the gates of struck hospitals, with no professional care. Scarey.
For travelers, things are still generally fine, and if you can spare the time and money, making a journey here is well worth it. I'm off on a wine safari today - just my speed.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
It's a Small World After All
The sugary, often-quoted Disney song "It's A Small World After All'' actually seems to correspond to reality every once in a while. That's certainly true during the FIFA World Cup tournament, when eyes around the planet adhere to the television screen to see who will rule the world of international football for the next four years - and World Cup tourism pours needed revenue into countries such as South Africa, this year's host nation.
Indeed, a report from Visa Inc. says that South Africa's tourism revenue in the period right before the World Cup 2010 tournament started, and during the first week of play, soared 54 percent over the same time last year. Visitor spending was led by travelers from the United Kingdom, followed by the United States, Australia, France and Brazil. More than "90 percent of spending was in typical leisure and business categories - accommodation, restaurants, retail, automobile rentals and air travel,'' according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
My home country, the United States, is both part of this quadrennial sport and travel ritual, and not. Football - or soccer, as we call it in the U.S., to differentiate it from its distant descendant, American football - enlists many boys and girls in youth leagues. But on the professional level it is at most the fourth most popular sport, after American football, basketball and baseball - maybe fifth, counting ice hockey. American women have won a World Cup, but American men have developed only fitfully on the pitch and still don't seriously challenge the world's top national sides, regardless of what U.S. media cheerleaders say.
America's push to join the world of football is both aspirational and delusional. It's a good thing, I think, to want to share the excitement of what most of the world calls "the beautiful game,'' but delusional on America's part to think our national team is good enough to do that. It's not - not yet.
The men's side, bounced from the tournament by Ghana, 2-1, in extra time, was forced to end what a U.S. national newspaper hyberbolically termed "a thrilling run to the World Cup.''
Excuse me, did you say run? The U.S. played four times and won once. The Americans were lucky to draw in their opener against unexpectedly weak England on a goalkeeper's error, had to rally to tie a team they were expected to beat (Slovenia), had to rally again to win in penalty time on Landon Donovan's dramatic goal to beat another team they were expected to beat (Algeria), then lost their first and only match in the field of 16, scoring their sole goal on a penalty kick. Ghana punched in two no-doubt-about-it goals on strong, athletic runs downfield. In 390 minutes of tournament play, the U.S. led for just three minutes. This was not a good team.
America has flirted with football before. In 1950, the U.S. stunned England, 1-0, in what is still America's finest hour in the World Cup. The old New York Cosmos, featuring stars like Franz Beckenbauer and the legendary Pele in the twilight of their careers, drew crowds of more than 70,000 fans in the 1970s before the stars twinkled out and the Cosmos (and the North American Soccer League) vanished. In 1994, the U.S. proved a competent and enthusiastic host to World Cup play, selling out venues around the country for that year's tournament. Bringing the World Cup back in the next decade might help close the deal with American athletes and sports fans.
Football's growth in the U.S. continues to be steady but slow, absent a breakthrough experience. Major League Soccer, founded in 1996, in a feel-good era following the 1994 World Cup, is a developmental league, corresponding to triple-A pro baseball at best in calibre of play. Gifted players leave the U.S. to play for money and glory in Europe. MLS clubs like the grandly named Los Angeles Galaxy generally play small stadiums in places like Carson, California, a nondescript suburb - not in starry L.A.
As an American and a fan, I hope this sporting-world version of what political scientists, in another context, call American exceptionalism will end. I'd like to stop calling it soccer. I'd like to be able to go to a match like the one I caught in Hamburg during the run-up to the 2006 World Cup, when Germany hosted. There, I saw polished football, full of grace and strategy and speedy, pinpoint passing, as host Hamburg SV took on (and lost to) VfB Stuttgart in a Bundesliga showdown before a large crowd. That quality of play doesn't exist in my part of the world.
For now, I'll watch the World Cup tournament on television, and dream on about joining that small world the Disney carolsters sing about.
Indeed, a report from Visa Inc. says that South Africa's tourism revenue in the period right before the World Cup 2010 tournament started, and during the first week of play, soared 54 percent over the same time last year. Visitor spending was led by travelers from the United Kingdom, followed by the United States, Australia, France and Brazil. More than "90 percent of spending was in typical leisure and business categories - accommodation, restaurants, retail, automobile rentals and air travel,'' according to the Pacific Asia Travel Association.
My home country, the United States, is both part of this quadrennial sport and travel ritual, and not. Football - or soccer, as we call it in the U.S., to differentiate it from its distant descendant, American football - enlists many boys and girls in youth leagues. But on the professional level it is at most the fourth most popular sport, after American football, basketball and baseball - maybe fifth, counting ice hockey. American women have won a World Cup, but American men have developed only fitfully on the pitch and still don't seriously challenge the world's top national sides, regardless of what U.S. media cheerleaders say.
America's push to join the world of football is both aspirational and delusional. It's a good thing, I think, to want to share the excitement of what most of the world calls "the beautiful game,'' but delusional on America's part to think our national team is good enough to do that. It's not - not yet.
The men's side, bounced from the tournament by Ghana, 2-1, in extra time, was forced to end what a U.S. national newspaper hyberbolically termed "a thrilling run to the World Cup.''
Excuse me, did you say run? The U.S. played four times and won once. The Americans were lucky to draw in their opener against unexpectedly weak England on a goalkeeper's error, had to rally to tie a team they were expected to beat (Slovenia), had to rally again to win in penalty time on Landon Donovan's dramatic goal to beat another team they were expected to beat (Algeria), then lost their first and only match in the field of 16, scoring their sole goal on a penalty kick. Ghana punched in two no-doubt-about-it goals on strong, athletic runs downfield. In 390 minutes of tournament play, the U.S. led for just three minutes. This was not a good team.
America has flirted with football before. In 1950, the U.S. stunned England, 1-0, in what is still America's finest hour in the World Cup. The old New York Cosmos, featuring stars like Franz Beckenbauer and the legendary Pele in the twilight of their careers, drew crowds of more than 70,000 fans in the 1970s before the stars twinkled out and the Cosmos (and the North American Soccer League) vanished. In 1994, the U.S. proved a competent and enthusiastic host to World Cup play, selling out venues around the country for that year's tournament. Bringing the World Cup back in the next decade might help close the deal with American athletes and sports fans.
Football's growth in the U.S. continues to be steady but slow, absent a breakthrough experience. Major League Soccer, founded in 1996, in a feel-good era following the 1994 World Cup, is a developmental league, corresponding to triple-A pro baseball at best in calibre of play. Gifted players leave the U.S. to play for money and glory in Europe. MLS clubs like the grandly named Los Angeles Galaxy generally play small stadiums in places like Carson, California, a nondescript suburb - not in starry L.A.
As an American and a fan, I hope this sporting-world version of what political scientists, in another context, call American exceptionalism will end. I'd like to stop calling it soccer. I'd like to be able to go to a match like the one I caught in Hamburg during the run-up to the 2006 World Cup, when Germany hosted. There, I saw polished football, full of grace and strategy and speedy, pinpoint passing, as host Hamburg SV took on (and lost to) VfB Stuttgart in a Bundesliga showdown before a large crowd. That quality of play doesn't exist in my part of the world.
For now, I'll watch the World Cup tournament on television, and dream on about joining that small world the Disney carolsters sing about.
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