Having received eco-tourism and sustainability awards for your properties, what are the one or two changes that you think would be easy, affordable and effective that other hotels in India could pursue to be more eco-friendly and sustainable?  

The most effective and affordable change that other hotels can implement to be more environment friendly would be  Zero Garbage and Water Harvesting system. These systems do not have huge set up and overhead costs but will make a huge difference in maintaining the ecological balance if implemented by all hoteliers and citizens alike.

The Wall Street Journal reports that India has only 86,000 hotel rooms in a country of 1.1 billion people whereas there are almost 74,000 rooms in New York City alone.  How will India meet the demand not only for hotel rooms but also tourism professionals to manage these properties?

Indian infrastructure is on a high development stage, there is boom in realty sector.  Having said that, I will say certainly there is need for more development to support Indian hospitality and tourism sector. Indian government is also taking few initiatives which is helping hoteliers to achieve bigger horizons but some more push is required by amending few laws and also thrust is required to provide better infrastructure to take India growth story a step ahead.

Having said that, we are taking few steps towards building the infrastructure for hospitality and tourism sector.  As we see tremendous potential for innovative concepts and service excellence, we have recently introduced three niche hotel chains in India; ‘VITS’, the luxury business hotel chain, ‘Lotus Resorts’ and ‘Garh Hotels’ that are based in forts. As a part of our continued commitment we are working on the ambitious plan of developing 36 VITS properties in the span of five years, 20 Lotus properties by 2010 and we are looking at various forts to make them as Garh hotels across India to offer top quality hospitality services to travelers.

You have operations in India as well as in Europe, the United States, Japan and Singapore.  What do you think other countries' hospitality businesses could learn from Indian businesses?

In India we practice the age old tradition and the principle of 'Aththi Devo Bhava', i.e “Guest is God” and God should always be treated with the best of everything and more importantly from our heart. I think that’s what other countries can imbibe from us.

If you could change one thing about travel and tourism in India, what would it be?

Tourism has to be used as an engine from the point of view of economic growth. India needs to realize its real potential and consider tourism as an industry which will drive change by itself.