A window of opportunity

Indians are being urged to open up their homes to tourists by providing bed and breakfast accommodation.

When schoolteacher Meera Dass quit her job last year, she just wanted to enjoy being at home for a change. Then she read a newspaper ad that said she could earn money at home while making friends from all around the world.

The advertisement announced a new government initiative to promote bed-and-breakfasts. It urged Indians to open their homes to tourists.

"I had this nice, large house with two extra rooms," says Dass, 49. "Why not give it a try?" The house, an elegant upper-middle-class residence with two giant mango trees in its front garden, is called Saubhag, or Good Destiny.

"At first," she says, "I wondered, is it safe to have strangers coming and going out of your house? I was worried about drugs, hippies and terrorists. But the experience has been enriching."

Since she opened her upper floor to guests eight months ago, Dass has received countless jet-lagged travellers from the United States, Britain, France and Japan. She has taught them Indian cooking but has cut down on red chilli powder. She has told them that India is changing but also advised single women not to wear revealing clothes when they go out. She has patiently answered the standard questions about India's caste system, arranged marriages, beggars and the ubiquitous mosquito menace. She has treated some for the infamous stomach ailment known as Delhi belly.

Over the past few years, the number of foreign tourists visiting India has grown by 12 to 14 per cent annually, largely because of the country's economic boom and an aggressive campaign to draw travellers. The influx, while welcomed by the government and businesses, has also highlighted a national shortage of affordable, comfortable accommodation.

With investors rushing to bolster the tourism infrastructure and catch up with rapid growth, officials announced a bed-and-breakfast programme at the end of 2006. They called it a natural extension of an ancient Hindu scriptural prayer in Sanskrit that says 'the guest is god,' now a popular slogan in tourism campaigns.

The B&B initiative has got off to a slow start. There are more than 11,000 hotel rooms available for people travelling to the capital, and another 30,000 are expected to be added before the Commonwealth Games in 2010. But so far, 200 bed-and-breakfasts have opened.

Still, officials feel the programme makes a lot of sense.

"Where is the land for more hotels in the city? It takes a very long time and a lot of money to build hotels," Ambika Soni, India's tourism minister, said in an interview. "We faced a real bottleneck, and so we decided to launch the bed-and-breakfast scheme," which includes tax incentives for people opening their homes. "It fixes the shortage and enhances cultural interaction between Indian families and foreigners," she said. "And it also empowers women who are at home by giving them an opportunity to earn while staying at home."

Apart from helping to open rooms, the programme helps address the demand for what the travel industry calls 'reality tourism' – a way to experience the Indian way of life up close. "The fancy hotels in India cost $600 (about Dh2,200), but they don't give any real local life experience," says Manish Kumar, who heads a home-stay marketing company called Incredible Indian Homes. Most bed-and-breakfasts charge less than $100 (about Dh367). "With home stays, you bring up the experience and bring down the cost."

Many in the industry acknowledge there have been a few hiccups along the way.

"Many bed-and-breakfast enterprises insist on only well-to-do tourists, not the backpackers. They want to know the source of income before they take bookings. Kumar says. "Many of them are jointly managed by the male heads and servants, and the women are not allowed to interact. Almost all of them have separate kitchens for tourists."

Indian bed-and-breakfasts differ from their Western counterparts in at least one respect. Here, travellers have a lot more people waiting on them.

"I have stayed in bed-and-breakfast homes in France. There is no interaction with the people there at all," says Vinay Aghi, who runs a plush B&B called Sun Villa. "You are given a gate card and a room card. You are directed to the room where breakfast is laid. Nobody attends to you. You are on your own. Here in India, you have a cook, a servant, a guard all 24 hours for anything you need."

This, too, could be said to represent the authentic Indian experience. Like most upwardly mobile Indians, Dass always had a cook, a housekeeper, a gardener and a driver. After she opened her bed-and-breakfast, she merely added one more attendant to the staff already working in her home.

For breakfast, Dass offers her foreign guests a choice between toast and an omelette or a deep-fried puffed bread, called poori, with potatoes and chickpeas.

She says the guests are fascinated by the street vendors who come on bicycles every morning, hawking fruits and vegetables or seeking to buy old newspapers and plastic cans.

"I used to hate their calls breaking the peace of early mornings," she says, sipping a tall glass of fresh lime and
soda that her cook had brought in. "But the foreigners love it. They take their camera out as soon as they hear the vendors' calls."

Dass' 19-year-old son, Raghuvir, has learned some lessons of his own.

"I have learnt that there is not too much of a difference between us and them, really," he says, shrugging his shoulders.

"They are surprised to see shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives on Indian television. And I see that they know so much about yoga and the energy centres in our bodies, called chakras. I guess it really is one world."

Booking notes

– The number of foreign tourists arriving in India has gone up annually by between 12 and 14 per cent

– Indian bed-and-breakfast options usually have a cook, servant and a guard who work 24x7, something that is usually not the case in their western counterparts

– Four- and five-star hotels in India cost roughly $600 (about Dh2,200) a night. Bed and breakfast options come
much cheaper at less than $100 (about Dh367)

– Be ready to divulge information such as source of income. Some bed-and-breakfast options can be picky about the kind of tourists they may choose to accommodate