This Diwali, Rakesh Mehta, a senior sales and marketing employee with an IT firm, will celebrate in Australia with his family. Mehta, is one of the top performers of his company and has been rewarded with this 'Diwali Gift'. Other top performers from his company will celebrate their Diwali in New Zealand and Mauritius. In fact, a lot of IT, BPO, pharma companies and banks are rewarding their employees for good performance by sending them to exotic locations.
Another Indian School of Business (ISB) is taking shape. Rajat Gupta, the former CEO of McKinsey & Company and now a senior partner in the professional services firm, along with his team is planning to set up a second ISB, this time in the North. The existing ISB in Hyderabad was Gupta's brainchild and is among India's most coveted business schools. It is spread over 260 acres of land and was set up in December 1999 at a cost of around Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).
Dubai Holding, an investment firm of the Dubai government, has threatened to come out with an open offer for Orient-Express Hotels if the Tata group acquires a significant stake in the hotel chain. This comes exactly a month after the Tata group's Indian Hotels Company bought 10 per cent and expressed interest in striking a deal which was turned down by Orient-Express.
Shortage of staff is preventing the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission from summoning over 140 B-schools to furnish details about their fee structure, faculty payments and tie-ups. The body issued notices to around 100 "defaulter" B-schools last week.
Rising real estate costs and lack of good locations in cities are driving hotel companies to rent space in malls and other commercial complexes. For instance, Accor Hotels is in talks with mall developers to build its Formulae 1 brand of budget hotels at the topfloor of malls in tier I and tier II cities.
Ginger Hotels, the no-frills brand by Roots Corporation, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Indian Hotels which operates Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces, is in talks with real estate developers to rent space in commercial complexes to run its hotels.
IMT-Ghaziabad's placement chairperson, Nilanjan Chatopadhyay, has scheduled visits to 15 companies in Singapore and eight in Hong Kong from July 2007 to January 2008. The institute has set aside a fund of Rs 6 lakh for promotional activities.
IIM-Bangalore has received around 70 offers so far this year .Companies which have made offers are Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro, HSBC, JP Morgan, HLL, P&G and Marico among others.
The rooms will be priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 1,400, based on the location, and will provide a basic room and dining service, gym and a wi-fi connection.
The facility will be available at four of Future Group's Big Bazaar outlets in Mumbai. Cleartrip will soon extend this tie-up to other Big Bazaar outlets in the city as well as other metros.
There's plenty of room for everybody. With the demand for low-cost accommodation on the rise, a whole host of hospitality firms, both foreign and local, is planning to set up budgets hotels.
ITC Hotels- The Grand Central, The Luxury Collection, in Mumbai, has recorded a 15 per cent rise in bookings for September month as compared with last year's booking of 60 per cent for the same month.
As Indians take to the roads like never before, restaurants are fanning out to the highways.
AICTE to induct 75 professors from across the country to implement programme.
Industry analysts suggest that the revision in Mumbai and Delhi could be up to 25 per cent. At destinations such as Goa and Kerala it could be as much as 30 per cent.
With the global weakening of dollar against the rupee making a dent in revenues, hotels across the country have decided to charge their domestic and international customers in rupee.
There are approximately 300 million domestic travellers each year and this number is expected to grow by 10-15 per cent every year.
Increased allocation to the higher and technical education sector would mean more funds to revamp the university education system and lay a thrust on technical education.
The Domina Hotel Group, Italy's largest hotel and resort operator, will start operations in India in the next two years.
Education institutes are using a new technique - search engine marketing - to spread awareness about their programmes and to create a niche for themselves in the students' minds.