NB Blogs

Responsible Luxury has been the codename for all things at ITC Hotels! Going Green has been their mantra for many years now, long before we heard all this talk of climate change. What has this journey been like, and at what cost? How will this translate into Responsible Tourism for the country at large, for all its stakeholders. We met with Nakul Anand, Director Hotels, ITC on how much the industry has moved towards green tourism. It was one thing to achieve targets for all your owned properties. How do you take this message to hotels you run as different kinds of joint ventures?  Speaking with the owners, we have a master plan to convert all hotels at some time into some form of a sustainable feature and classification. What exactly would that be, we are working on various blueprints, et cetera, but very clearly we would continue with our progression and take it further to managed properties, take it further to the other franchised properties like WelcomHeritage; even if it be a f...

Too much is at stake for all concerned. This could become a yet another protracted war. On 21st October, we broke the story that the Hamas attack in Israel had as one of its targets, the prestigious IMEEC project floated at the recently held G20 Summit in New Delhi. That the G20 outcome was impacting those not desirous of India’s success! The Nijjar killing in Canada, too, had its origin in the same principle. Disrupt unity in this emerging alignment, as it could put the nail in the coffin of the BRI initiative which had found its own detractors. It had flawed economies in the region, made small nations bankrupt with unviable projects. Both these perspectives had been put forward by our columnist Iqbal Chand Malhotra, at a time when the media was focusing elsewhere; the focus was on the fallout of Prime Minister Trudeau’s mis-guided missiles, not on why he was a prisoner to his domestic compulsions. Canada and India have been close friends with shared ties, marred by the ‘K’ factor, wh...

Kerala’s tourism has been essentially a rural tourism story! Not city based but experiential built by individuals! It is a celebration of the state’s culture and traditions! How has this played out? Over the years and where does this stand today? Today, there are modern day drivers like mice, weddings, sports, special events, how much of this has caught on with the state’s tourism drivers?  Has there been any noticeable negative effect of tourism in the state? Every destination has to keen reinventing it to remain relevant! Is this happening in Kerala? Has the PPP model in tourism Kerala kind of waned off. Is the private sector more complacent and the government is more on its own? These and more are some of the questions we had for Jose Dominic, senior member of the Dominic family, who run the most impressive and successful hotels in the state, under the brand of CGH Earth. Where is the real genesis for the present tourism industry in your state? Though a late starter in Tourism K...

As a young Delhi boy, he decided to go into films, has done 35 projects till date, has arrived on the OTT platform as a star, with his recently released ‘Made in Heaven’, holds all promise to strike into the big league with his down to earth thinking. In a free-wheeling conversation, Arjun shares his beliefs, his ideas on going forward, most of all, as a human being. You are a leading star on OTT platforms and a great champion for LGBTQ causes in both your series. How has the response been to LGBTQ as a subject, in your understanding through your films and also generally on OTT? This is the third time in my career that I played a gay character. The first time was in fact my very debut back in 2007. And back then there were no references whatever. There was no representation of the community that had been done accurately before that, other than in Deepa Mehta’s Fire, just the odd film here and there, which was considered extremely arthouse at the time. Other than those in mainstream cin...