Extravagant weddings translate to good profit for hotels.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: The summer months have long been popular for nuptials, but many U.S. hotels are now looking to a very specific type of wedding to boost their coffers — those of the Indian American variety.
Large Indian weddings are notorious for staging grand spectacles, and they are becoming increasingly coveted by the area’s largest and more luxurious hotels as a way to make up for lost government and corporate business.
“For us, an average Indian wedding is spending $300,000 to $400,000,” said Ani Sandhu, whose company planned a recent event at the Ritz Carlton Tyson’s Corner in Washington, D.C. He told CBS News that with both sets of parents paying and a minimum of 250 guests, the money adds up fast.
The average cost of an Indian wedding in the United States is roughly 10 times the national average, according to Indian Weddings Magazine, a San Francisco-based publication.
Prominent Washington hotels, including the Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons, have begun actively trying to woo Indian couples, reported CBS. The Willard Intercontinental even has a designated path for grooms to arrive by horse.
Professor Devesh Kapur, director of University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Advanced Study of India, pointed out to Fortune that the Indian community in the U.S. has grown tremendously over the past few years. Indian Americans of the second generation want to combine Indian and American wedding traditions, which results in what he calls “the big fat Indian” wedding.
In the past, some of the features of Indian weddings —such as an open flame, or the presence of an elephant or horse — provided notable obstacles for venue owners. But nowadays, many hotels in major metropolitan areas have got all of that under their belt.
According to CBS, Mariott has gone so far as to implement an “Indian Culture Day” where hospitality staff are given a crash course on South Asian traditions, food, and fashion.
Neel Patel and Nisha Kumar revealed the experience was one of the reasons they chose a Marriott property for their upcoming wedding.
“I was surprised there were places here that knew exactly what they were doing,” Patel said. “An Indian wedding the groom has a procession outside. Is that allowed? Not allowed? Open flame, you need that permit,” he rattled off.
Hotels also need to know what kind of fauna will be involved in the ceremony; elephants are banned in some locales but are still permitted in Maryland, Washington D.C., and Virginia.
The Washington Post noted several other efforts by hotels to rake in the Indian wedding cash:
The Baltimore Marriott Waterfront has installed its own tandoor oven and hired an Indian chef to cater large South Asian weddings. The Mayflower Renaissance in downtown Washington, which hosts about one Indian wedding a month, has a backup horse provider on call, just in case. And a number of other area hotels have begun stocking their pantries with chai and frozen samosas to serve to potential wedding clients.
“There is a clear business opportunity here,” Apoorva Gandhi, vice president of multicultural affairs at Marriott, told The Post. “With the rising demographics come rising [spending]. We’re in a competitive market, and we want to make sure we’re doing all we can to have that business come with us.”
While hotels’ motives may be purely profit driven, the extra effort that goes into providing Indian customers with their money’s worth can mean the world to some on a much more emotional level.
For 31-year-old Deepika Shukla, who was married in May, finding the right venue had been an arduous, months-long process but the Westfields Mariott had everything she was looking for, including a list of South Asian vendors. She explained to the Washington Post that the one detail that impressed her the most was that on the day of her wedding, employees showed up dressed in traditional Indian clothing.
“That was really meaningful,” said Shukla. “You could tell they knew what they were doing.”