The Kamat group of hotels is planning to set up a hospitality management institute in the next three-four months, a hotel management and tourism training institute over the next two months and an ‘enviroscope’ museum, which will feature products made out of waste.
Besides, the group plans to construct a budget hotel and a five-star hotel, under the brand name ‘Orchid’, over the next 16 months.
The five-star property would come up near the airport. Both the budget hotel and the five-star property would operate like other Kamat group hotels, on a unique ‘zero garbage’ concept, he said.
Kamat’s Orchid is at the forefront of many environmental activities. Every year, Kamat himself joins around 200 students from Mumbai-based schools to clean beaches after ‘Ganesh Visarjan’. A no-plastic drive is held twice a year in the metro; last year, the team collected 1,500 kg of plastic.
Kamat will also launch TEAM (Tree Environment And Me) in Nagpur with the objective of encouraging people to plant saplings and look after trees. “We have a target of one lakh trees over the next two years,” he said.
The group is also planning to build another Ecotel in Raipur by the end of 2006. It is also launching the first ‘Raincentre’ in Mumbai at its Lotus Suites in the hotel for rainwater harvesting.
