18-months after being acquired by Brookfield, Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts managed to turn around its operations. It is set to make its international debut by the next fiscal in addition to launching at least three new hotels in India, as it has achieved pre-Covid-level occupancies despite the ongoing pandemic. BusinessLine spoke with Anurag Bhatnagar, Chief Operating Officer, on the turnaround plan.

Since being acquired by Brookfield in 2019, what have been the key focus areas?.

The last 18 months have kept us very busy. This is literally Leela 2.0 as we call it. When Brookfield acquired The Leela, they were very mindful of the value, the recognition, and the brand that holds a global presence.

To find a balance between legacy and novelty, we have made sure that we preserve our core values of excellence and luxury. To blend it in with novelty we have been working on our capabilities, talent, food and beverage, technology, brand image, digital marketing, and operation enhancement.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit soon after the acquisition, how did that affect your plans?

It was a boon in disguise that the Covid-19 gave us an opportunity to execute our plan at the speed with which we wanted to accelerate.

We, in fact, used the lockdown period to work on our existing hotels as well as our new hotels. We also opened two hotels Leela Bangalore and Leela Gandhinagar, and the third one is coming up by September. We chose a 360-degree approach to be customer-ready when things open up. This will give us an upper hand when the markets open up.

What segments did The Leela invest in to speed up this growth?

We invested in top talent in all functions, and vaccination for all our associates and their family along with our vendors and partners.

We invested a large chunk in using technology as an enabler. On the front end, we introduced contactless check-in, e-newspapers, e-butlers, WhatsApp guest interface, and e-menus; and on the back end, we partnered with international customer management and customer-relationship management system players. We focused on building rich content assets to attract customers when things open up.

We also pivoted our focus on domestic markets. We partnered with leading designers like Manish Malhotra, among others, who is also our ambassador for the ‘Weddings by Leela’ product.

On the food and beverage side, too, we are working to make sure each of our F&B brands at Leela has a unique identity and signature. We are working on new menus, along with making sure there is a uniformity across brands. We are coming up with our own wine and beverage program, barista, and festive sweets and food. So, to sum it up, we have a lot coming our way. We are working on every element of the brand.

What was the kind of growth the company has been able to map in the past 18 months?

It’s been very exciting for us because we had a lot of wood to chop and a lot of ground to cover in terms of space. We actually signed three hotels and are at various stages of opening. We opened our Palace hotel in Jaipur which is seeing tremendous commercial success.

The hotel in Gandhinagar is a 318 key hotel that has India’s largest convention space, the Mahatma Mandir. Some global conferences are doing site inspections. We’ve managed to seal the deal worth $2.5 to $3 million and have already been signed for 2022 and 2023.

Our third hotel will open up by the second half of September at Bhartiya City in Bangalore. Our fourth hotel is to come up in Banjara Hills, Hyderabad by the end of this year or early next year. We are looking at more acquisitions around wellness retreats, resorts and wildlife. Our international hotel will come up by early 2023.

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