Indianness Comes Within

An Exclusive Interview with Mr Rattan Keswani on Cultural Impact on the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Industry

Hospitality Lexis / Print Edition November 2019

Deputy Managing Director, Lemon Tree Hotels Limited; Director, Carnation Hotels Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Keswani says, and generating employment for specially-abled is our return as Indians to our Community”

Mr RK: We are very conscious about the sustainability pattern that in itself is the return back to the community so all our hotels are made elegantly ecovalent. At Lemon Tree what we do is we hire a lot of opportunity deprived citizens when I say opportunity deprived it could be specially-abled or it could be clearly economic disparity. As a percentage of our permanent employees, we’re the largest employers of specially-abled people so we have a large number of people who have physical impairments and we also have a number of people that we’ve hired right now who have had an unfortunate circumstance of being victim to some mishap so we employ them, we train them we get onto the category where they can perform all jobs in the hotels. So, therefore it is our return as Indians to our community.

Bastar Art in Lemon Tree Hotels

Creating Value as our return to society We buy a lot of art from the village of Bastar in Chattisgarh. As villages have a lot of people who’ve never given opportunities, we felt that in our hotels we would showcase Bastar art. By buying a single piece of Bastar art, you can actually feed a family of five in the village for a month. We go beyond Indian architecture and try creating value as a return to society, which we would like to reflect true Indian-ness. At the same time, other than the Bastar pieces, we bring regional art into our hotels, which represents the art and culture of the location where we are opening a hotel.

Kumaoni Thali at Lemon Tree Premier, Corbett A reflection of Local

Lemon Tree tries to put local vibrancy in each property, and in lot of our hotels, we have special food in every hotel that displays the typical food culture of that location. Our hotel in Corbett specializes in bringing out a local ingredient infused Kumaoni Thali. With this Thali, we’re bringing the nature of the food of that location into play in our menus as depiction to our customers. Food is one of the strongest links to culture as it goes back to heritage, goes back into learning about the ingredients, thereby giving an ethnic touch in at least one or two items that are from that region itself.

“We feel that Indianess comes from our cultural depth of belief on our return to people & planet, which is the Indianness within rather than showcasing Indianness by architecture or design!” says Rattan Keswani.

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