Jetsetting with ... Starwood’s Rajit Sukumaran

SINGAPORE — It won’t be too long before you check into an independent property that’s under the Starwood hotel group. Last Thursday, the group announced the launch of Tribute Portfolio, a collection of independent hotels to add to its nine existing brands that include Westin and St Regis.

“The name Tribute is meant to pay tribute to the spirit of the independent hotel, to the individual owners,” explained Rajit Sukumaran, Starwood’s senior vice-president, Acquisitions and Development in the Asia-Pacific. He believes the time is ripe for such a diverse collection within the group as travellers take on different personas and want different things out of a hotel on different trips. He’s one such traveller — preferring familiarity, efficiency and consistency in hotels on his work trips. Leisure trips, however, are completely different. “My daughters decide which hotel to go ... They’re the key determinants!” he quipped.

Q: Do you have favourite hotels within the Starwood group?

A: For business, it’s usually Westin, Le Meridien or Sheraton as they deliver what I need and promise a certain level of service quality. For my family holidays, my kids would ask for a Westin because of its great Kids’ Club. They now know how to sell it to me by saying they’ll stay at the Kids’ Club so my wife and I can go to the spa.

Q: How do you ensure an enjoyable time when you travel with your family?

A: My daughters are nine and five years old, so I let them plan the itinerary. However, I give them a list of options to choose from — which my wife and I agree on. That gets them involved while still staying within reason. Having said that, it’s usually me who ends up messing up our holidays. I’m a pretty last-minute guy — there was once I underestimated the time it took for us to get ready to leave the house, so we missed our flight to Phuket. This was at the peak of the holiday season and we couldn’t get another flight. We had to cancel the trip. I felt so bad that I took them to Malaysia on a road trip.

Q: How does being a last-minute guy work out for business trips?

A: I have a laptop bag that doesn’t contain a laptop. Instead, it has everything I need for my trips — from my travel documents to foreign currencies, my chargers, iPad, eye drops ... The minute I know I need to travel, I can just take the laptop bag and go. Knowing that I can be last minute, I also plan my connections by getting the hotel I’m staying at to book intercity transport for my meetings.

Q: Besides missing flights, what stressful situations have you been caught in? How do you handle them?

A: Work trips are always stressful because you worry if you need to cancel your first programme if you’re going in late. That affects the rest of the flow. I’ve been lucky — nothing major has ever occurred. As I travel frequently in the Asia-Pacific region, the worst so far was me arriving at a meeting and finding nobody there because I was actually two hours early. I didn’t set my watch to (account for) the time difference. As for handling stressful situations, they happen. You can’t control them. Most people who are affected by your changes are usually more understanding than we realise. Serene Lim