When Narendra Modi came to Chequers in July last year for the historic signing of the Free Trade Agreement with his opposite number, Sir Keir Starmer, the Indian prime minister chose to stay at Luton Hoo, Surinder Arora’s Grade I listed hotel in Bedfordshire.
As the helicopter ferrying Modi from Stansted airport landed in the lush grounds of Luton Hoo, Arora was on hand to welcome his special guest.
“It was a great honour,” Arora, the founder and chairman of the Arora hotel, property and construction group, said later.
Arora appears to be becoming part of the great and good. The Times, for example, mentioned his birthday.
The Times, along with The Sunday Times, has been trying to find out more about the man, as has the BBC’s Business Daily which ran a 17-minute radio interview with Arora.
What has particularly attracted national attention is Arora’s bid to build the extension at Heathrow. He claims he can do it cheaper and better than Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited. Even the biggest airlines, such as British Airways, are backing Arora.
A piece in The Times, headed “Rival bidder for third runway attacks Heathrow over planning costs”, reported: “Surinder Arora, the hotel tycoon, accuses the airport of ‘taking people for a ride’ with its expenses, calling it ‘classic Heathrow gold-plating’.”
The rival bidder for Heathrow’s third runway has accused the airport of “taking people for a ride” by “gold plating” the planning costs for its £49 billion expansion project, The Times said.
Arora “pointed to the vast difference in early planning expenses for the two schemes. The costs have been disclosed in a consultation document from the Civil Aviation Authority, showing that Heathrow was seeking to recoup via the regulator £71 million in ‘early costs’ for this year alone. That contrasts with an estimate of expenses from Arora of about £4 million.
“The Heathrow project is more complex, involving a longer 3,500-metre runway and sixth terminal, priced at £33 billion, versus Arora’s 2,800-metre runway and terminal costing £23 billion. Heathrow’s scheme also requires rerouting and tunnelling works for all 12 lanes of the M25, with the total costs encompassing works to modernise the existing airport.
“However, Surinder Arora said the scope of the projects was not an explanation for the wide difference in early planning costs.”
Arora told The Times: “This is classic Heathrow gold-plating. It’s Heathrow all along. They just want a money-making machine. People don’t realise they are being taken for a ride.”
Meanwhile, The Sunday Times had an intriguing angle on the Indian entrepreneur: “Surinder Arora was playing golf with President Trump a fortnight ago. Now he is waving a letter he’s recently received from HM Revenue & Customs telling him he’s entitled to a £200 winter fuel payment.”
“I’m going to give the money to charity,” Arora told the paper “with a mischievous glint in his eye”.
“Such are the contradictions of being a billionaire in Sir Keir Starmer’s Britain. Hobnobbing with the most powerful person in the world one day; dealing with state benefits the next,” the paper said.
“Not that Arora is short of contradictions of his own,” it added. “This weekend, the hotels tycoon, 67, is committing to invest more than £2 billion in the UK over the next three years, despite misgivings about how the country is being run.
“Getting tough on immigration might seem somewhat hypocritical for someone who arrived aged 13 from India in the early 1970s. His mother was a midwife and his father a factory worker.”
“There were eight of us living in a three-bedroom terrace house in Southall,” Arora recalled.
“Immigrants, Arora believes, should be welcomed — but only if, just like the Aroras, they come to the UK to work and contribute to the economy.”
“Not one day have I, or any of the family members, ever claimed any benefits,” Arora commented.
Meanwhile, Arora has revealed why Modi stayed with him and how he made sure the Indian prime minister was well looked after.
For one night, Arora had the responsibility of looking after the Indian prime minister and his entourage which included India’s external affairs minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar; the commerce and industry minister, Piyush Goyal; and the national security adviser, Ajit Doval.
The Foreign Office and the Indian High Commission selected Luton Hoo as the ideal place for Modi to spend the night.
Arora explained: “From the security point of view, it’s perfect. There are not many estates in the country with more than 1,100 acres of ground and yet no public right of way. So they can lock it down completely. We have 228 rooms but we have closed many of them (in readiness for renovation work). But we had some 70 odds rooms which they took and yet wanted more.”
Since Modi is a vegetarian, “we made sure we had a Gujarati chef,” continued Arora. “We had Indian vegetarian food. For dinner and breakfast, the team did me proud. I was a little nervous since Luton Hoo was going to be shut. I realised we have got a big PM coming. In the next couple of years, India is going to be among the top three in the world economy. Would we be able to look after him?
“The prime minister was really impressed. What he said to me was that he was really happy an Indian owned the hotel. He was very kind and happy. The next day we had a picture of him with all the staff.”
Reconstruction and renovation work has already started following a “groundbreaking ceremony” on October 9.
“We are spending in excess of £170m at Luton Hoo,” Arora went on. “We’re literally going to rebuild the whole estate over two years. It’s a beautiful estate which will have a new golf course, a new clubhouse, a new spa. We will refurbish all the bedrooms. There will be new meeting rooms, and new restaurants. We will just redo the whole thing. The hotel brand will be Fairmont, like the one in Windsor Park.”
He and his wife Sunita did ponder quitting the UK for Dubai.
“My God, half of London is there,” he quipped.
“Inheritance tax is a killer,” said Arora. “Sunita and I had a very serious discussion. We go to Dubai for no more than two or three weeks at a time. I like the heat. But we decided at our age….(not to move).”
