Offtrack: Puri; Quaintness as USP

Offtrack

India Today, November 23, 1998
Nov 23, 1998

OFFTRACK
Quaintness as USP

Expect the unexpected at the 76-year-old South-Eastern Railway Hotel.

By Ruben Banerjee

As the taxi rolls up the driveway, you wonder whether the driver had heard you right. This quiet, nondescript building couldn't be a hotel, certainly not one that is touted as the crowning glory of the Indian Railways. But your chauffeur insists that you have, indeed, arrived at the South-Eastern Railway Hotel (SERH) in Puri. You venture inside, trying to locate the front office. But there is no receptionist in sight. In fact, the SERH doesn't have one. For that matter, it doesn't have a regular front office either, with a room on the ground floor housing the booking office.

"The SERH is a class apart. It is unlike all other hotels," boasts Prabir Dutta, the deputy manager. You can say that again. For morning tea, there is no room service, you can't pay through credit cards and not all the rooms have idiot boxes. That's not all. The front gate closes at 10 p.m. sharp every night and the hotel staff go off to sleep preventing guests from checking in or out at night.

Wouldn't this be enough to make a tourist change his boarding and lodging plans for Puri? After all, over the years glitzy hotels and plush resorts promising five-star comforts have mushroomed in this fast growing coastal town. Far from it. The un-hotel like ambience of the SERH is the very thing that makes the hotel tick. Guests vouch that the laidback atmosphere makes them feel at home.

That, and the friendliness of the staff, makes the hotel special for them. A legend about how a large cot was specially made overnight to ensure that an extraordinarily tall guest slept in comfort is part of the hotel folklore. Also, SERH offers more at less. For Rs 1,000 a day you get a double bedroom, plus breakfast, lunch and dinner for two persons. All this, however, has not been able to push up a floundering 26 per cent occupancy rate.

So, while the new kids on the block have cornered a big chunk of the business, SERH continues to enjoy the patronage of certain old faithfuls. One such family is that of the celebrated filmmaker Satyajit Ray. Ray would often holiday in Puri and sit for hours on the long balcony of the hotel, gazing endlessly at the vast expanse of the sea. It is some years now that Ray is gone. But his family -- wife Bijoya and filmmaker son Sandip -- continues to patronise the hotel. Ditto for the many other guests who have been visiting SERH for generations now.

What draws them to the hotel is its old world charm and an atmosphere that transports them nearly 50 years back. "It is nostalgia that is at a premium here," says Ajit Kumar Haldar, the hotel manager. Indeed, when the Union Tourism Ministry accorded SERH heritage status last fortnight, it was in recognition of the fact that it had withstood the test of time. "It is the showpiece of the railways," gushes spokesman Guru Ray. The recognition came none too soon for a hotel that was started way back in 1922, when the Indian Railways purchased an Englishman's estate -- the Arshworth Villa -- for a princely sum of Rs 50,000 and invested another Rs 1.5 lakh to convert it into a hotel.

Though the SERH's share of the tourist traffic has thinned down considerably over the years, the management has been unable to check the slide, its hands tied with red tape as they are. A new set of billiard balls arrived only after a year of petitioning the powers that be in Calcutta. And the hotel is yet to get a fax machine though its need was felt more than a year ago.

The little attention the hotel has got from the authorities has come in a haphazard manner. The SERH has a website on the Internet to spread awareness and attract tourists. But though the railway station at Puri is crowded with billboards of every guest house in the town, there is no mention of the railway's own hotel.

The lack of marketing and slow response to customer needs has caused the hotel's profits to dwindle. In 1996-97, the hotel made a profit of Rs 1.3 lakh. This figure came down to Rs 76,588 last year. If such stepmotherly treatment continues, the star of yesteryears is bound to fade into oblivion.

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