Someone who steered the Oberoi Group of hotels to be on the international luxury travellers’ map, P.R.S. Oberoi, passed away on November 14 aged 94. A deserved winner of the Padma Vibhushan, India’s second-highest civilian award, he was fondly called Biki. The younger son of the founder of the group, Rai Bahadur Mohan Singh Oberoi, he took over the reins of the company after his father passed, and made it India’s first international luxury brand.
Known to be a stickler for perfection, he did his education from India, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Despite his diminutive frame, it was his personality that was massive and commanded respect among his peers and within the organisation, as he worked tirelessly to transform his father’s East Indian Hotels company into a brand known for its immersive luxury experiences.
Having been privy to observing his father in close quarters as he navigated the hospitality space, Mr. Oberoi had famously admitted that this was the only business he knew. After all, he had the luxury of being able to travel the world and stay at the world’s leading hotels to understand what luxury really meant. And he used this to transform the group to what it is today. The Oberoi Hotels & Resorts and Trident brands have 32 luxury hotels and two river cruise ships in seven countries as of today.
The patriarch of the brand, he started The Oberoi Centre of Learning and Development at New Delhi in 1967. Apart from being known for his attention to detail, (the degree of lighting, placing of switches, height of the bathtub or the curtain’s exact colour), he built, among other properties, the Rajvilas, Jaipur, Wildflower Hall, Shimla, Udaivilas, Udaipur, Amarvilas, Agra, and Vanyavilas, Ranthambhore, in India. Prioritising being the best over being the biggest, he transformed the hospitality landscape of the country in his six decade long career.
Known to never cut corners, he was a stickler for doing things right. Would you believe it? He would send his breakfast back if the egg yolk of his egg did not have the perfect sunrise yellow? And further, he would ensure that the entire batch of eggs would not be used for other guests either? Well, this was his example of being a “fussy guest” which just goes to show his passion and his need for his staff to be perfect “99.5%” of the time. It’s a trait that has well and truly rubbed off into the staff at the Oberoi Hotels even today.
“He was a class act. Period.”
In fact, his deep-rooted knowledge of the nuances of hospitality was what made him stand out. Who else would close a flagship hotel like the Oberoi in Delhi for two years to give it a more contemporary luxury look? He believed that “hospitality is all about common sense which is hard to find”. He knew everything – from the storage capacity of underground water tanks in his hotels, the location of the original load bearing beams of his hotels to F&B margins and room service standards in all his hotels.
Probably the best way to remember him is in the words of industrialist Anand Mahindra whose tribute to him on X read, “He made ‘Oberoi’ a global byword for the Indian luxury hospitality experience and the first to put an Indian hotel on the very top of global rankings. He also rallied the group heroically but quietly post the 26/11 attack on their Mumbai flagship. He was a class act. Period.”
A pioneer, a visionary, and a legend, P.R.S. Oberoi is irreplaceable.
