The group
One family, two hotels.
Two buildings, one family, and an idea that is unglamorous
and we think correct: what a guest remembers is not the lobby.
It is whether the room was clean. Whether the air conditioning worked.
Whether there was hot water at five in the morning, and whether anybody was
awake at the desk when the train finally came in.
The first house opened in Miyapur, Hyderabad — a boutique property
where every corridor is a different state of India, hand-printed floor to
ceiling. The second is in Varanasi, built around the way people actually
travel to Kashi: in groups, arriving together, leaving for the ghats before
it is light.
We are not a chain and we have no ambition to sound like one. Both houses
are run by the family that owns them, so the number on the sign reaches
somebody who can change your booking rather than a call centre working from
a script.
Fifty-one rooms across two cities is small. That is rather
the point — it is still possible for the people who own the buildings
to know what is going on inside them.
