GN

IndiaI Digest 2008 provides a comprehensive review of the Indian hotel industry covering the six key markets of Bangalore, Chennai, National Capital Region/Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune.

While domestic tourism is expanding in India owing to an increasingly affluent and growing population, greater consumption and the introduction of low cost airline carriers, the Indian government is looking to grow foreign visitation to ten million international visitor arrivals by 2010, the year of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi.

Over the last five years, India has seen double-digit growth in foreign visitors to a ten-year high of five million arrivals in 2007.  Foreign exchange earnings for the same year soared in tandem to INR480 billion (USD12 billion), a year-on-year increase of 34 percent.

The strong performance of the corporate sector and the growth in the economy has led to an unprecedented surge in business travel.

"While the Indian economy has been affected by the current challenges faced by the global economy, the impact is expected to be short term," JLL Hotels executive vice president Sudeep Jain said.

Aggressive growth in revenue per available room (RevPAR) has been recorded in the three key cities of Delhi/NCR, Mumbai and Bangalore over the past five financial years.

The murder of Lalit Kishore Choudhary, the chief of an Italian MNC in India, by retrenched workers is, perhaps, the most brutal and ghastly incident in the labour-management relations in the country. Choudhary had asked the Union Government for help, which, in turn, passed the plea to the State Government. But the State did not react. If steps were taken in June, when the trouble was at its peak, the CEO would be alive today. Unfortunately, the vast army of babus in labour department does nothing except push files. Their interest in better labour-management relations is lacking.

There are around 3,000 industries in NOIDA and Greater Noida with more than two lakh employees. Companies face labour problems on a regular basis. Roughly 2,500 cases are pending in labour courts. When Ratan Tata can face innumerable problems in Singur, a foreigner would naturally assess his chances to conduct business in such an atmosphere.

Apart from NOIDA, even Gurgaon, housing many foreign MNCs, is another story of complete apathy of the State Government. Two decades back, Gurgaon was touted as the next destination for inve