Bangalore hotels cut down on freebies
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Tuesday, 10 June 2008 |
You have to pay for your airport pick-up and drop if you are staying at a 5-star luxury hotel in Bangalore. That's not all you will even have to pay for your breakfast, which was earlier complimentary.
In November that the country's major hotel chains will phase out complimentary breakfast and airport transfers. This, they say, is in keeping with international practices. "Everybody's average room rates (ARR) have been hit due to various factors, the main being the appreciating rupee. India's hospitality industry, which is still underdeveloped, has started moving towards international practices," said Taposh Chakraborty, CEO of Boutique Hospitality Consultants.
Hotels will be looking at increasing room margins by saving anywhere between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000. Currently, on an average, a luxury hotel spends close to Rs 3,000 in offering free airport transfers and Rs 600 in offering complimentary breakfast per room guest. |
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CM will look after Bangalore
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Sunday, 08 June 2008 |
It was a long wait for those selected to govern Karnataka, caused by a tortuous exercise that involved demands and counter-demands, attempts to push a favourite's case or to pull somebody down. At the end of it all, few seemed to be happy late on Saturday night.
Following the practice of his predecessors, chief minister B S Yeddyurappa has retained Bangalore administration along with urban development. His second-in-command, S Suresh Kumar, has got municipal administration, law, justice, human rights and parliamentary affairs. Senior minister R Ashok was disinclined to accept transport, which he was allotted.
The sensitive portfolio of home has been given to V S Acharya. The all-important public works portfolio has gone to C M Udasi. Bellary's mining czar G Karunakara Reddy has got revenue; his brother G Janardhan Reddy tourism. Their friend B Sriramulu — the third minister from Bellary district — has landed health and family welfare.
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Robber techies nabbed in Bangalore
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Saturday, 07 June 2008 |
A six-member gang, including three techies, who had been allegedly kidnapping their counterparts for ransom, was arrested here on Saturday.
Two cars, lethal weapons, Rs four lakh cash, six mobile phones and fake explosive devices have been seized from the arrested, whom the police identified as D K Kiran (26), Muniram (32), Praveen (25), Rajkumar (28), Sandesh (25) and Bharath Amla (40).
Among the arrested Muniram, Sandesh alias Soodesh and Amla are engineering graduates, while Kiran holds a bacherlor degree in Tourism and Hospitality.
According to City Police Commissiner N Achuta Rao, the modus operandi of the gang was to kidnap software engineers, tie fake explosives around their waist and demand hefty ransom threatening them if they fail to pay up, they would be killed activating remote controlled "bomb".
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No SPV for Bangalore Metro, Plan panel for govt fund
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Saturday, 07 June 2008 |
After almost two years of the Cabinet giving the go-ahead to the Bangalore metro rail project, the Planning Commission has said that the state-owned Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC) should finance the project with grants from the government instead of sticking to the 50:50 equity model that involved setting up a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for the funds.
The Commission is of the view that in case a SPV is set up, then the ownership is not clear and the functioning is not transparent. Therefore, the funding should be done as grants instead of the equity route, which would not require a SPV, an official told FE .
The project, estimated to cost Rs 6,395 crore, has a debt-equity ratio of 70:30. As per the current funding model, the Centre and the Karnataka government are to contribute 15% each to the equity portion. For the debt portion, 45%would be taken care of by the BMRC in the form of borrowing from the Japanese Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and the remaining 25% would be raised through subordinate debts. The JBIC is providing the loan at an interest rate of 8.75 % per annum.
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Bangalore bullies students from Gujarat
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Friday, 06 June 2008 |
The huge group of Gujarati students who returned on Thursday realized that their brute majority was no force in this pharmacy college of Bangalore.
The 30-odd students, who returned from Devnalli's Rural College of Pharmacy after being harassed and hounded by locals, were among the 51 Gujarati students in a class of 55! The rest being from New Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Bangalore.
All those students who are packing their bags to get professional degrees after paying hefty fees in colleges outside Gujarat, beware! These students were beaten up by locals after they caught a boy stealing from their rented apartments and narrated their sorry tale of discrimination and deception. The prospectus of Rural College of Pharmacy, Devnalli, promised a plush building complete with facilities like skating rink and a football ground. But these students were not even allowed to play cricket.
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