Monday, June 27 2005 12:51 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Bangalore: Perennial traffic problems in Bangalore and high hotel tariff and occupancy rate are prompting some city-headquartered software biggies to think in terms of owning a 'hotel' on their own for clients and visitors.

NASDAQ-listed Infosys Technologies Limited, for example, was the first to get off the blocks.

The information technology major has now set up an in-house 500 room hotel-like complex christened 'Le Terrace', equivalent to a four-star hotel, for its clients and visitors coming to Bangalore.

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

The five-storied Rs 40 crore project has come up on the 275,000 sq ft area in the Electronic City campus.

According to an Infosys official, former F&B Head of Hotel Leela Palace, Jean Michel Jasserand, will start a French restaurant on 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," Infosys specified separately, the report said.

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

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

"Today, 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 etc," 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 taken to commute 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 one on our residence block here," the official said.

In fact, some of the Infosys' clients also expressed their desire to stay closer to the campus because of the commute time and the lack of easy availability of hotel accommodation.

"Bearing in mind these factors we decided to build the Infosys Residence in the campus," the official said.