Indian hotels pamper women travellers with a floor of their own
Anindita Ramaswamy, Deutsche Presse-Agentur/New Delhi
Traveling in India has become a lot more fun, and far safer, for single women.
Many Indian hotels now offer exclusive women-only floors with specially-designed "feminine" rooms, big discounts on spa treatments and extra security.
"It's a growing international trend. It's good for business and also good for customer satisfaction," said general manager Anil Malik of the ITC group, which has 66 hotels in 50 Indian destinations. "We designed the product for women keeping safety and comfort in mind."
So ITC introduced Eva Floors, or exclusive floors for women, in seven of its hotels - two in western Bombay city, also the country's financial capital, and one each in New Delhi, eastern Calcutta, and the southern cities of Madras, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
There are two Eva Floors - smoking and no-smoking - at the ITC Grand Central Sheraton and Towers in the heart of Bombay's financial district, with 16 rooms, including three suites.
The freshly-renovated rooms come in soft pastels, special lighting, separate "day beds" for an afternoon nap, larger counters for cosmetics, high-end toiletries, silk robes and bathroom slippers, more powerful hair dryers, ironing boards, large flat-screen plasma TVs, and goody bags filled with tweezers and cosmetics.
"The idea is to fulfill the psychological needs of a lady. Eva rooms also stress on extra security. The doors have double latches, the elevator only stops on a Eva floor through a special access card and each room has a videophone," Malik told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
Eva floors have all-women staff, from room service to housekeeping and even security. Women check in directly at the Eva floor instead of the hotel's general reception, each guest's call is screened and all male visitors are escorted to the room.
Indian hotels are investing in women travellers, a majority of them business executives, who comprise 10-15 per cent of occupancy rates. Of these, about 70 per cent are foreigners.
"Even if the Eva rooms are unoccupied we have a strict policy against letting them out to men," Malik said. "We have fixed costs of the renovations, and recurring costs of the room extras plus the additional female staff."
Single women at ITC are automatically booked in Eva rooms and upgraded to a tariff that includes a butler service and airport transfers, he said, at no extra charge.
"It's a good investment, and other hotels chains like the Leela, Oberoi and Taj are also becoming more sensitized to the needs of women," Malik said. "It only makes sense in a country that is progressing so fast and catching up to China. Business is booming."
"In the corporate sector, the woman traveler is distinct from her male counterpart in terms of needs and services," said Peter Leitgeb of Leela Palaces and Resorts. "It is critical for us to address this rapidly-growing segment."
Some hotel chains that don't have all-women floors yet offer discounts on spa services, in-room massages and special room service menus.
The Park in Madras encourages working moms to travel with their children by providing baby-sitting facilities.
The Taj Group said it wasn't dedicating entire floors to women because a majority were business travellers who preferred to stay on the same floors as their male colleagues. Also, the business from such women was in spurts and didn't give the hotel flexibility to allocate those rooms to men.
Not all women want to stay on separate floors, said Roop Chadha, general manager of the Residency Towers hotel in southern Madras city.
"We started our exclusive women's floor in 2003, and maybe the idea was two years before its time. We believed if you have 8-9 women travellers then they would be more comfortable on a floor of their own," Chadha said.
The four-star luxury hotel located in Madras' commercial center also had a women-only lounge and bar, but that closed after 18 months because women preferred to be "where there is a little more action. The lounge was too quiet for them", he said.