The Taj Residency at Visakhapatnam is a 13-year-old property, perhaps the most imposing on the city�s prestigious Beach Road, with all of its 93 rooms, seven executive suites and four deluxe suites looking onto the sea. That is the hotel�s USP. The view, and also the food. It has two restaurants, one a Chinese called Ming Garden offering tangy Szechwan starters and aromatic soups, and the other a coffee shop called Harbour View with coastal Andhra food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Weekends, Harbour View stays open till 2 a.m., but it is really Ming Garden that draws the crowd. It is the best Chinese restaurant in Vizag and all of the city�s foodies, including the Navy families, converge here on Saturday and Sunday.

Mathew C. Thomas, the affable general manager of this property, describes its USP properly: �Apart from all facing the sea, the Taj�s rooms are also the largest in the city, plus we have the biggest swimming pool in Vizag, the most successful discotheque, and a tie-up with the Kerala Ayurvedic Centre for herbal oil massages.� He is a proper Taj man, has been one for 20 years, and with different properties. The kind of clientele the hotel attracts, Mr. Thomas says, is eclectic. �A mix of the business crowd, corporate chiefs from Hyderabad. Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi, the company executives who form the conference segment, and a huge leisure crowd during Durga Puja from Kolkata. It is an overnight journey from Kolkata. And if the Bengalis want to take a break, then Vizag is better than Puri. We offer a special package for them. It is called the Babu Moshai Package and it is a big hit!�

He is expecting the city to grow. Industries are coming in encouraged by Chandrababu Naidu�s policies. HSBC is already there with 2,000 youngsters for call centres. Vizag has the potential. It offers the tourist so much too. It has the Araku Valley, a tribal area 112-km away and inhabited by about 19 tribes, which is a nice, three-hour train journey. There are the beaches drenched in the sun with white surf breaking on the shore. At some places, it is safe to walk out into the sea for as far as half a kilometre! And low hills flank the plains against the scene of a bustling metropolis, making Vizag a visually attractive city. �The expats who are mostly Germans, Americans, English, Dutch, French and Russian (they work with the Navy) love the city,� says Mr. Thomas.