Le Terrace - 5-star hotel, owned by Infosys

Perennial traffic problems, and high hotel tariff and occupancy rate are prompting some city-headquarterd software majors to think in terms of owning a hotel on their own for clients and visitors.

The Nasdaq-listed Infosys Technologies, for example, is the first to get off the blocks. Infosys has now set up an in-house, 500-room hotel-like complex christened Le Terrace, which is equivalent to a five-star hotel for clients and visitors.

The hotel is managed by the company, which had, as on March 31, 2005, 36,750 employees of 53 nationalities in different parts of the world.

The five-storeyed, Rs 40 crore project has come up on 2,75,000 sq. ft. area in the Electronics City campus.

According to an Infosys official, former F&B head of Hotel Leela Palace, Jean Michel Jasserand, will start a French restaurant in the property.

"The residence will house the board of directors when they visit for meetings. The rooms are available to conference attendees and out-of-station employees as well," a spokesperson said.

"Le Terrace already has 120-130 guests, including overseas guests, staying in the hotel," she said. "The rooms, including suites, are likely to have the best of facilities like wireless connectivity and high-end plasma TVs along the lines of five-star hotels in India."

Infosys officials said there were several factors that they took into
account before deciding to set up the Infosys residence in its Bangalore campus.

"We have over 36,000 employees worldwide. Bangalore being the headquarters of the company, a number of employees need to travel to Bangalore for training, meetings, client visits and presentations," a senior Infosys executive said.

"Hotel occupancy being high in Bangalore, we are finding it difficult to get suitable accommodation for our employees. In addition to that, the transit time from a hotel to the campus or vice-versa is long and is marked with traffic congestion and delays. Hence, it made sense to build our residence block here," the official said.