"100 mn outbound Indian travellers by 2020"

Frits Van Paaschen, Chairman, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, which has brands like Le Meridien, Sheraton and Westin in its stable, was in India recently on a whistlestop tour. He spoke to BT's Kushan Mitra on his chain's plans for India. Excerpts:

Eight of our 70 "Luxury Collection" hotels are in India. We are now looking to expand the Westin brand. Our fourth Westin hotel will open shortly in Gurgaon to give us 26 existing and 15 properties under construction here. We are also launching our "Aloft" brand, which is a youthful and economy brand, in Bangalore and Chennai. Each of our nine brands is different and the economics of those brands are different as well.

There is no reason India can't become like China. Our 1,000th property globally opened in China recently. We now have 55 hotels there with 80 under construction. India can be a major growth driver both domestically and globally. I expect to bring in the "W" brand, which is a new type of luxury hotel, into India. By 2020, there might be as many as 100 million outbound travellers from India. I would want them to be "Starwood Preferred Guest" (SPG) members and stay in Starwood properties.

We managed to weather the downturn better than others. In fact, in 2009 we opened 83 hotels, which was the second-most in a year in our history. We were really helped by our loyalty programme "Starwood Preferred Guest". It is the world's leading loyalty programme and on any given night, four out of 10 beds are occupied by a SPG member. But it was still a lean period. Travel was down and people had to cope with it. We are now seeing numbers coming back.