Carlson Hotels Worldwide today announced that its global portfolio of brands opened 19 new properties during April and May. The company has opened an average of nine new hotels per month since the start of 2005. These additions bring the companys total number of properties to 895 in 68 countries. Carlson hotel brands include: Regent International Hotels, Radisson Hotels & Resorts®, Park Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Country Inns & Suites By Carlsonsm and Park Inn®.

Among the 19 new hotels, five new Radisson Hotels & Resorts properties opened in the United States with several in key airport and downtown locations; Park Plaza Hotels & Resorts welcomed five new locations, including a new flagship hotel for the European region; seven new Country Inns & Suites By Carlson opened, including two managed properties in key California markets; and Park Inn debuted its first hotel in Iceland, as well as a new hotel in Brunswick, Georgia, which unveiled the brands new interior design concept for North America.

As a company, we are exceeding our development plans for the first half of 2005, opening hotels at a record pace in key business and leisure travel markets throughout the U.S. and around the world, said Sam Winterbottom, executive vice president of development for Carlson Hotels Worldwide. A good portion of this success is due in large part to one agreement which resulted in 12 new managed properties, expanding our managed hotel portfolio by 66 percent.

Radisson Hotels & Resorts Opens Five New Hotels

For Radisson, adding new airport and downtown hotels in key markets was the focus the past two months, as the brand welcomed the Radisson Hotel New Orleans Airport in Louisiana, the Radisson Hotel & Suites Kansas City-City Center in Missouri, plus three new managed properties: Radisson Hotel Phoenix Airport North, Radisson Hotel Salt Lake City Downtown, and Radisson Hotel Gateway Seattle-Tacoma Airport.

More: hotelnewsresource.com

State governments are moving in to contain speculation by real estate developers. While the Haryana and Rajasthan governments have started imposing Section 4 of Land Acts declaring their intent to acquire land for development and therefore a freeze on unplanned private development, the Noida Authority has moved in and taken action against the Rai University which had constructed a campus on land listed as agricultural.

In Gurgaon property prices fell by as much as 15% after the Congress government in Haryana under chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda started going slow on change of land use from agricultural to commercial or residential. The argument, explains a senior bureaucrat in the state, was that there has been sufficient change of land use in the last few years and it is better not to sanction greenfield development until that land gets consumed.

In Gurgaon, land and real estate values had scaled up about 50-100% in the last few years beacuse of intense speculation by investors who booked in bulk in every new project that was issued, in anticipation of rising values.

More: financialexpress.com

A SUN story about a reporter buying credit card details from a call centre man has excited the Wall Street Journal to make its own investigations on the subject.

Gurgaon, for those who of you who have never been south of Delhi - a Hindi word for the heart - is a super skyscraper city on the way to the deserts of Rajasthan. Turn right for Rajasthan down the trunk road.

According to assiduous hacks at the Wall Street Journal, British rozzers have said they may have little jurisdiction on the case.

The broadsheet newspaper, referring to British tabloid The Sun, which broke the story, talked to a girl at the Metropolitan Police who told it that the British rozzers couldnt charge anyone in India.

Nor will the government of Mahabharata assist, it appears.

More: theinquirer.net

The glitzy face of Global India is so mired in infrastructural imbalances that, without remedies, it might be Gurgaon Dying.

When the Haryana government first started to pitch Gurgaon, it was as a perfectly planned city. One with international standards of roads, housing and entertainment — the whole nine yards.

Now, when we should be enjoying the fruits of all this planning, we find that the roads are potholed and bumpy, some pockets experience 12-hour power cuts, there is no public transport to speak of, and every day there is a story in the papers about burglars making off with lakhs.

“This is not what we were promised,” says Sanjay Kaul of People’s Action, a three-year-old advocacy group in Gurgaon. “The government’s forgotten about their ‘integrated township’, and what are we left with? Malls. Are we going to put up with 12-hour power cuts simply so that we can go to a mall at the end of it all?”

The problem is not about the standard of living, or even the quality of life — many residents admit that, compared with Delhi, their problems are not that bad. No, the problem lies in the gap between what was promised and what’s been delivered.

More: business-standard.com

India’s BPO hub Gurgaon will soon have cyber cops — specially trained and equipped to track down any breach of security, fraud or computer-related crime that may take place in the plush air-conditioned interiors of its call centres.

With The Sun expose of an Indian call centre selling sensitive data on British bank customers creating fresh shock waves across India’s ITES industry, Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda today announced that he had constituted a committee to look into policies, and to formulate an action plan to tackle cyber crime. On the specifics of Karan Bahree episode where a call centre employee allegedly sold client data for a price, he only said, “Investigations are on and the guilty — if proved so —will be punished.”

Undeterred by the bad publicity that the initial spate of reports, he also announced a special task force comprising representatives of both government and ITES industry headed by Nasscom president Kiran Karnik to come up with policy suggestions to develop Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Panchkula as IT hubs in keeping with Haryana’s technology parks & IT corridor policies.

More: economictimes.indiatimes.com

State Industrial Development Corp (HSIDC) has built a hotel that will offer Japanese food and ambience in a bid to attract tourists from that country.

The Rs.200 million hotel is spread over three acres near Gurgaons Management Development Institute, a spokesman for HSIDC said here Saturday.

The centrally air-conditioned hotel has 100 percent power backup, a Japanese restaurant and facilities comparable to the best in the industry, the spokesman said.

Construction of the hotel was completed this month.

More: news.webindia123.com

A day after an employee of a Gurgaon-based web-marketing firm created a storm over leakage of sensitive details of bank customers in Britain, the West Bengal government today sought incorporation of stricter provisions in the IT Act to deal with rogue call centres.

There is a need for stringent laws within the IT Act for taking action against errant call centres, principal secretary of the West Bengal IT department G D Gautama told reporters on the sidelines of seminar on knowledge process outsourcing organised by Indian Chamber of Commerce here.

He said the rogue call centres were threatening growth of the booming BPO industry in India and the government should see that the provisions are implemented on the ground when needed.

The state IT department, led by minister Manabendra Mukherjee and Gautama, met officials of companies like Texas Sun Microsystems and Synopsis in Bangalore urging them to set up shop in the state.

More: financialexpress.com

THE Gurgaon Police today claimed that more names were likely to come up as the inquiry into the alleged BPO scam gets under way. Gurgaon SSP Yoginder Nehra today instituted a suo motu inquiry into the case with DSP Kulvinder Singh in charge.

Infinity e-Search has handed over a handwritten explanation to us which they claim has been sent to them by Karan Bahree, Gurgaon DSP Singh said. The contents of the document are not very clear. While naming a few more people other than Sameer, the writer has tried to plead innocence…However, it is still to be confirmed that the explanation was written or sent by Bahree…If it is established that a cognizable offence has taken place, we would register an FIR into the case.

More: cities.expressindia.com

The Central Government has recently approved in principle the setting up of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) over an area of 3,000 acres near Garhi Harsaru in Gurgaon district of Haryana. It will be located close to the Delhi-Jaipur highway or alternatively on NH-8. It would be set up by the Haryana State Industrial Development Corporation (HSIDC) and help in accelerating the pace of development and promote Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and resultant exports.

The Haryana’s commissioner and principal secretary, industries, PK Chaudhry, says that the decision to this effect was taken in a meeting held by senior officers of the state government with additional secretary in the commerce ministry Gopal K Pillai.

Infact, points out Mr Chaudhry that this decision was a sequel to the new Industrial Policy announced by the chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda earlier this month.

The SEZ would be developed in two phases at an estimated expenditure of Rs 2,060 crore and out of which around Rs 742.2 crore will be financed through internal accruals. According to officials 1,715 acres of land for the first phase of this project was in an advanced stage of acquisition and the process to acquire the land for the second phase was being initiated shortly.

More: financialexpress.com

Two days after the alleged data theft by an Indian BPO worker, Karan Bahree, the Gurgaon police have initiated investigations into the case.

The enquiry has been kicked off even though the police have not yet received any formal complaint about the incident. Meanwhile, Infinity e-Search, the company where Bahree was employed, has sacked him following the probe.

According to the allegations by the UK-based newspaper, Sun, Bahree an employee of a Gurgaon-based web development company, Infinity e-Search, had sold confidential financial information relating to customers of few British banks.

The police has started the enquiry based on newspaper reports, and has questioned several workers of Infinity e-Search. The company had earlier passed on his statement to the investigating agencies. Bahree has not reported to work since the news broke out about.

In an earlier statement by Infinity E-Search, Bahree was said to have conceded to the act of selling confidential information to a British undercover reporter, but was not aware of the contents of the CD.

More: economictimes.indiatimes.com