NB Blogs

Mumbai grown, ‘Made in India’, now a global gold standard in visa outsourcing, VFS Global, which has been a trusted partner for the UK Government since 2003, has won the global contract for overseas UK visa and Citizenship services. This award is the latest in a long line of wins for the world’s leading visa, passport and citizen services provider. VFS Global becomes the service provider for all UK Visa and Citizenship Application Centres overseas – operating across 142 countries. Estimated to manage 3.8million applicants every year, VFS Global is now opening UK application centres in 84 new countries during 2024. New contract will also see significant investment in technology to improve the customer experience, accessibility and security. The UK contract is the sixth global contract won by VFS Global during 2023. During 2024, VFS Global will deploy 240 Visa and Citizenship Application Service (VCAS) Centres for the UK in 142 countries across Africa & Middle East, Americas, Austral...

Awakening our Sensitivity towards Senior Citizens is the Need of the Hour. “India is at a peculiar stage in its demographic transition. The country is characterised by a bulge in its youth population, which is a window of opportunity to accelerate growth. However, a parallel phenomenon that requires equal attention is the rising senior citizen population,” Saurabh Garg, secretary, Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, has written in a newspaper article. Not too soon, not too late, for a subject that is increasingly occupying public space and attention. Senior living is becoming a growing concern, what with many a youngster going overseas, or settling in another city, with the size of the core family coming down, nuclear families as they existed in the past, is indeed becoming a thing of the past. According to Census 2011, the population of senior citizens was about 10.38 crores, or 8.6% of the total population. Saurbah Garg has pointed out that there is a Maintenance and Welfar...

Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) has completed the renovation of the Taj Mahal hotel in Delhi. This iconic Mansingh Road property was recently in the eye of the storm witnessing a heady auction conducted by NDMC. IHCL retained the right to run the hotel in Lutyens' Delhi for another 33 years after a 2018 NDMC public auction for the property. It has since spent close to `250 crore in refurbishing the hotel that completes 45 years. Once won again, the Taj Group got down to some serious business, preferring not to shut it down, neither knocking it down, but refurbishing it one step at a time. Re-imagining it, like the group has been doing its entire portfolio! Not surprising the company turned out a profit exceeding 1000 crores last financial, a figure that had never been imagined before in the history of Indian hospitality. Today, the Taj Mansingh has been fully renovated, it has bounced back to the same levels of revenues and profits that were clocked earlier. And, this is despite the l...

I wrote a piece for the social media, the day PRS Oberoi passed on at the age of 94. A life most well lived, his was an exceptional journey that is difficult to capture. Here is an extended reminiscing of his contribution to Oberoi Hotels, Indian travel and tourism and to all those whose lives he touched, in so many ways. A legend passed on, this historic 14th November morning. PRS rode over, like the proverbial colossus, on all that he surveyed, looked at, built, nurtured, he is one of the kinds who are recognised as legends in their lifetime! He was held in awe and reverence, his aura exuded energy and confidence – in his beliefs, his determination and his zero tolerance to shortcuts. He was unforgiving when people showed a lack of application; deep within him he had a heart of a child, striving to excel, never giving up in his relentless urge for excellence in all that he did. He little knew else; fastidious to every detail, including the styling of every menu printed at even the sm...

It was that fateful day when the tunnel partially collapsed, with 41 construction workers trapped inside. The regular excavator machines were brought in, but with no success. Then came an auger machine to drill through the debris, to form a passage. This failed too, and a bigger machine was flown in. This machine made some headway, with some 9 metres of success. This hit a snag and then another machine was brought in. Drilling stopped and new solutions were thought of. Different approaches to dig, reach out, were devised. Pipes, visual cameras, some more drilling. Finally, rat-hole miners, a much-derided lot, came to the rescue, to manually drive home to the trapped 41. Outside, closer to the final hour, 41 ambulances were waiting. Family members of the trapped workers were waiting. So, was the world with bated breath. Non-stop television coverage, anxious enquiries from all sections of the society, it has been one common concern. Whether we will succeed, and when? Also, waiting was th...

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...