PEAKLIFE

The heiress of The Leela Group of Hotels, Amruda Nair, has invested 15 years of rich experience in the hospitality industry into creating Araiya Hotels & Resorts – a luxury boutique hotel management company – with the goal of redefining luxury travel, on the destination at a time. By staying committed to the authentic ethos of warm Indian hospitality, and blending it with global best practices for exemplary service, this award-winning hotelier, art collector, and philanthropist is set to bring about a shift in India’s luxury-boutique landscape.

You are carrying forward a family legacy with your entrepreneurial endeavours. What is your definition of a luxury travel, and how do you create that experience for guests?

I am a third generation hotelier and so my family holidays were usually planned with a purpose – from visits to resorts in Indonesia and Hawaii with my father Vivek Nair, before The Leela Goa was built; to Berlin, Paris and Marrakech with my grandfather Captain Nair; and travel trade conferences. Luxury travel to me has always been about space and time, the people you engage with as well as the unique memories you take back with you. At Araiya Hotels luxury in travel comes from the uniqueness of the destination, the creation of curated experiences and personalised services. We leverage the Araiya Discovery loyalty program and our technology platform to track guest history and preferences, to make our repeat guests feel both recognised and rewarded.

Before launching Araiya Hotels & Resorts, you had a vast experience of 15 years in the industry working in varied roles. How did this experience enrich you, and what prompted you to launch your own company?

I believe that every part of the journey teaches you something that you can use in the future. Guest relations at the Mandarin Oriental taught me about SOPs and the Middle Eastern market. My time as a consultant with JLL in investment sales exposed me to the buy-side, and in advisory roles I learnt about looking for the upside during feasibility and valuation studies. Being an analyst in asset management for a real estate fund taught me to look at hotel assets from the lens of an owner, which helped when I joined the family business in 2010, at a time when the family was expanding The Leela flag to over 2,200 keys under management. My role as a CEO for the joint venture in Qatar gave me an opportunity to work with scale, and the opening of our 611 room hotel in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a great experience. I returned to India three years ago to launch Araiya Hotels & Resorts as I believed there was a gap in the market for experiential lifestyle driven resorts and urban formats that were efficiently designed and built, as well as technology-led.

Does your passion for giving back to society translate to your professional pursuits as well?

I believe that hospitality and tourism can play a massive role in generating employment and wealth creation in the country – not just in the cities but also in non-urban locations. The sector already contributes to 9% of the country’s employment and has the potential to also give women equal opportunity for career development. In our resort in Himachal for example, over 50% of our team is from the surrounding area and we have women in the front office, spa, kitchen and landscaping. I have been a trustee of Apne Aap Women’s Collective for over a decade, where we work towards preventing second generation sex work in the red light district of Mumbai, by helping women and children get access to education and vocational training. We have had many success stories where the daughters have been able to secure jobs with prestigious hotel brands, and break the cycle.

The hospitality industry has been very directly and severely impacted by the pandemic. How did you navigate this unprecedented challenge?

Our response to the pandemic was to keep our structure lean and be prepared for volatility in the medium term. We invested heavily in technology which allowed us to offer contact-less check-in and engage with our guests more effectively. We were able to reduce dependencies and drive bookings to our own website, so that over 50% of the business was coming to the hotel directly. Clear and effective communication with both guests and the team was very critical.

What are the key leadership lessons you have learnt along this journey, which could benefit fellow entrepreneurs?

I believe that every entrepreneur’s journey is different but what I have learnt along the way is to know what drives you, and to build your business and life around that. My grandfather had so much clarity when he founded The Leela – he wanted to put India on the map. When asked to describe himself, he would say, ‘dreamer, gardener, and lastly, hotelier,’ which reflected in the hotels he built. Similarly, I am passionate about sustainability, women empowerment, the joy of service, discovering the outdoors and learning from history and places. Araiya Hotels reflects that passion for respecting our environment, enhancing its natural beauty and adding value in a responsible way. Whether it is using local material to build, or bringing in indigenous colours and textures in design, bottling our in-house water, reducing plastic, and using vegan, chemical-free bath products, we live by the promise that our retreats will reflect the beauty of the destination and respect the local ecosystems.

Over the past two years, more and more people have opted for bespoke, intimate travel experiences. What are your predictions for the future of India’s hospitality landscape?

There has been a clear shift in the willingness of the domestic traveller to explore the country and seek new experiences within a driveable or single flight radius. Indian guests are also showing an openness to boutique properties with unique features or in undiscovered locations. Experience-oriented journeys, a preference for sustainably designed hotels, and contactless interactions were already on the rise even prior to the pandemic. Therefore with the experiential resort projects we have under development in Gujarat and Kerala, our focus that been on creating spaces and offerings that cater to this demand. At Araiya Hotels we believe that the trends we are seeing in terms of adoption of digital technologies, conscious consumption, and customisation were already in play pre-pandemic. What we are witnessing now is an acceleration of those trends, a quicker response by the industry, and better use of data to provide better service. Our prediction is that trust and safety will remain the key currency in the short to medium term.

For more information on Araiya Hotels & Resorts, visit https://www.araiyahotels.com/