India needs to do much more to improve "Ease of Doing Business", feels Vivek Nair, Chairman and Managing Director of The Leela group of hotels. "While we have moved up 30 ranks, the fact is that there are 99 countries that are still ahead of us,” said Nair. He was speaking from his specific experience in hospitality where his hotel project in Agra has been stuck for the past three years.
"We needed some 18-20 permissions for the project and we got most of them. But now Agra Development Authority has said that a Supreme Court committee needs to examine the project and then only it can be cleared. We are waiting for the visit of this committee but it has not happened so far", he said at a press conference to announce Leela's new property at Gandhinagar.
He further said that while the government talks about increasing tourist arrivals to 20 million in the next ten years, number of rooms will also have to go up in that proportion and therefore it is important to look at the ease of doing business.
Being the chairman of services export promotion council, Nair also furnished a list of demands to the government to give boost to hotels and tourism. Prominent among those is the granting of infrastructure status to hotels with a project cost of Rs 50 crore and above and tax benefits.
"Tax benefits would permit hotels to avail term loans with a long repayment schedule of 15 years or even 25 years under the new infrastructure policy for all sectors," said Nair in his list of demands.
Among other things, the council has also asked for rationalisation of GST imposed on hotels charging over Rs 1500 per room per day. "The recent levy of GST at 28 per cent has crippled the hotel industry as tourists find the tax rates very oppressive compared to other competing tourism minded countries who charge 0 to 12 per cent", said the council's note.
Apart from announcing Leela Gandhinagar, which will open in January next year, the group has also bagged contract to manage India's largest convention centre. Spread over 34 acre, the Mahatma Mandir convention centre can handle up to 15000 people, and includes a convention hall boasting a seating capacity of 6000 people as well as state-of-the-art exhibition centres, hi-tech conference halls and seminar rooms. It is a 25-minute drive from the Ahmedabad international airport.
"The addition of Mahatma Mandir and The Leela Gandhinagar to our MICE portfolio reinforces our plans to expand further into the international conferences and events space, and underscores our asset light growth strategy. The projects combine grand space with global standards of service and cater to the growing demand for world-class venues," said Nair.
Some of Leela's upcoming projects include a resort in Jaipur and hotels in Bangalore and Hyderabad. It also has projects coming up in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Vietnam.