Last Updated:August 05, 2025, 23:49 IST

Four people were killed and at least 130, who were initially feared trapped, have been rescued in Dharali, a key stopover to Gangotri housing many hotels, restaurants and homestays

Massive flashfloods — most likely triggered by a cloudburst — in the quaint Himalayan village of Dharali in Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district, swept away homes, hotels, cars, and trees leaving a trail of destruction behind.

Four people were killed and at least 130, who were initially feared trapped, have been rescued in the village that is a key stopover on the route to Gangotri, the origin of the Ganges, and also houses many hotels, restaurants and homestays. Before-after images of the village show the scale of devastation.

According to officials, at least half the village has been buried under fast-flowing mudslide of slush, rubble and water. They said rescue and relief teams have been battling the elements in the ecologically fragile heights to contain the damage.

Contiguous buildings, including three and four-storey houses, fell like a pack of cards as the surging waters washed over them. The devastating flashflood came in the wake of a cloudburst somewhere in the catchment area of the Kheer Ganga river.

State disaster management secretary Vinod Kumar Suman said Dharali was not the only hit. The raging waters flowed down two different sides of the same hill, one towards Dharali and the other towards the village of Sukki, he said. 

Landslides have blocked 163 roads, including five national highways, seven state highways and two border roads across the state, further impeding rescue and preventing personnel from getting to the far-flung area, about 140 km from the state capital Dehradun and usually a five-hour drive.

Uttarakhand principal secretary RK Sudhanshu said 40 to 50 buildings have been damaged. Local residents said a large portion of the Dharali market was washed away.

Rajesh Panwar, an eyewitness to the horror of nature’s relentless fury, told PTI that about 20 to 25 hotels and homestays may have been washed away. There was widespread panic in the neighbouring villages following the flashflood.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said no stone is being left unturned in providing assistance to the people. “I express my condolences to the people affected by this tragedy in Dharali, Uttarkashi. Along with this, I pray for the well-being of all the victims. I have spoken to Chief Minister Pushkar Dhami ji and obtained information about the situation. Under the supervision of the state government, relief and rescue teams are engaged in every possible effort,” he said.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah also spoke to Dhami and ordered the dispatch of seven rescue teams to assist the affected people. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said the Centre and the state government are working in tandem, taking all possible measures to save precious lives.

Dhami, who was in Andhra Pradesh, cancelled his trip to return to Dehradun. He said he is constantly in touch with senior officials and the situation is being closely monitored.

“The news of heavy losses due to cloudburst in Dharali (Uttarkashi) area is extremely sad and painful. SDRF, NDRF, district administration and other related teams are engaged on war footing in relief and rescue operations,” he said in a post on X.

(With PTI inputs)

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Uttarkashi, India, India

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It has also launched support programs to ease pressure from rising costs, Cuculic and Brad LeBlanc, BWH’s senior vice president and chief development officer, said during an interview at AAHOA’s 2025 Convention and Trade Show. BWH generated $8 billion in revenue in 2023 and operates more than 4,500 hotels in 100 countries and territories, according to its website. Its loyalty program has 53 million members, and Cuculic is optimistic.

“We’re a resilient industry and at BWH Hotels, we’re an optimistic company. We look at challenges as opportunities, and we’ve been meeting as a team,” Cuculic said. “When a challenge presents itself, I think you have to look at how you’re going to react, and if the strategies you put in place are still the strategies you are going to execute, and for us, they are. We see nothing to lead us to change course of our long term strategies, and that includes our investments in technology, marketing and sales.”

LeBlanc said developers should look at the long-term trajectory of the industry. He cited previous challenges, from high oil prices in the 1970s to the 9/11 attacks and COVID.

“We’ve been through a lot. We’ve been through a lot of turbulence and the industry ends up on the other side better than it was,” he said. “Look at a long trend, and the trend doesn’t change. It’s just straight up. People want to travel. It’s demand for lodging, and that’s what we do,

Still, Cuculic said they are “being thoughtful, watching carefully.” At the same time, the company continues to provide support for its owners.

“When headwinds appear, you reassess—but nothing so far suggests a need to shift course,” he said. “We’re focused on the long term: investing in AI, technology, marketing and sales, while integrating those tools across development, revenue management and operations to stay efficient and effective.”

Following a vision

Part of BWH’s planning for the future was to set a target of reaching 5,150 hotels globally in five years. Cuculic said the goal is achievable if you remember that BWH is a global company. It signed 300 deals last year and has more than 200 hotels in the pipeline.

“You don’t just create that kind of a vision,” he said. “You have to drive revenue. You have to drive brand contribution. You have to have a strong loyalty program. That’s how you get there.”

In June, BWH reported that it added nearly 100 new hotels globally in the first half of 2025. Most were in Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and in areas following traveler interests and trends like cultural discovery, wellness, and outdoor adventure.

“The first half of 2025 has been nothing short of transformative for BWH Hotels. We’ve not just added hotels; we’ve strategically expanded our footprint, igniting our growth trajectory worldwide. This remarkable achievement is a testament to the unwavering dedication of our partners and hoteliers, who share our vision for unparalleled hospitality,” Cuculic said in a statement.

Cuculic also said the company is seeing growth in markets including North America, India, the Middle East, South America, Europe and Scandinavia. Cuculic said India remains a core opportunity.

“I was just in India. Everybody there is tremendously positive,” he said.

That positivism is driven by the policies of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Cuculic said.

“He’s investing in the infrastructure, highways and airports, which allows people to travel. It encourages travel,” he said. “As you’re encouraging travel, based upon that growth of the infrastructure, hotels will follow. So, everyone is very bullish.”

In January, BWH Hotels announced plans to expand WorldHotels into India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. The company, which acquired WorldHotels in 2019, is now present in South Asia through

Sorrel Hospitality, its New Delhi–based master franchisee. Indian media reported that Sorrel will extend operations into Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Brand strategy

BWH segmented its brand portfolio to match developer needs across different regions and cycles. Its brands cover extended stay with @Home, Executive Residency and SureStay Studio; boutique and upscale: Aiden and Sadie; economy: SureStay; and soft branding: WorldHotels.

LeBlanc also said clarity in brand positioning is critical for development traction.

“You have to have a brand that meets developers where they are in their development appetite,” he said. “I would say that BWH is an organization that, over the last five to 10 years, has done a really good job putting its swim lanes in place as it built a brand family.”

During BWH’s owners’ conference last year, LeBlanc said extended‑stay brands ruled the pipeline. That hasn’t changed, he says now, with strong interest by the company’s franchisees.

“When the capital markets improve, and they will, extended stay is going to be on the front side of that line,” he said.

The company is focusing on extended stay in sectors such as healthcare, workforce housing and energy. Cuculic said the healthcare industry has a growing need for hotels to house traveling medical professionals.

“As we have an aging population, health care needs are expanding, and extended stay near health facilities are huge opportunity,” Cuculic said. “That’s where people need us, and I’m using that term need us because it’s almost humanitarian to have a long term, extended stay, term hotel near those kinds of facilities.”

LeBlanc said other industries with itinerate work forces support extended stay.

“I love the oil and gas business,” he said. “I absolutely love the world of energy, and as energy plugs into what I think it will in the next four or seven years, extended stay will be again at the forefront of that development.”

The company is also expanding into outdoor lodging. Zion Wildflower Resort in Zion National Park, Utah, its first glamping project, launched with strong presale performance. Leblanc said Tony Nelson, Wildflower’s managing partner, was pleased with the presale season.

“He, by all means, is smiling ear to ear,” he said. “When we plugged him into this $9 billion reservation system that we have, he doesn’t need much of that to be a big success. He was already a minimum of 50 percent occupancy.”

A second property, Pico Bonito Lodge, has been signed in Honduras.

“It’s upscale, it’s luxury. They’re actually renovating to even make it more upscale,” LeBlanc said. “It’s going to be a neat opportunity for us to walk into what I call outdoor hospitality. I’m a believer that outdoor hospitality is going to be a big piece of our business in the future.”

‘Tariff impact limited so far’

Both executives said the company is monitoring the impact of tariffs and material costs on hotel development. So far, they do not see any major disruption.

“It’s those projects that are entering the construction mode that are having to step back and go, ‘All right, what’s my lumber look like? What’s my sheetrock look like, what’s my metal look like, what’s my wood look like? And so, that’s left to be seen.”

Cuculic said BWH continues to take a “cautiously optimistic” view.

Philippe Starck is a designer with a kaleidoscopic mind, one forever brimming with playfully subversive ideas that strike a perfect harmony between form and function. While his industrial work often leans towards the nuanced and pared-back, it’s in his hospitality projects that his imagination erupts into full rhapsody.

Earlier this year, the French creative unveiled his vision for Brach Madrid, the Evok Collection’s second Brach property following its Paris debut. For Starck, the interiors were never meant to feel like ‘decoration or architecture’. Instead, he conjured a love story to drive the design: a woman, adored by a man who fills her space with objects that evoke their romance. Rooms, accordingly, are joyously eclectic with elements like castanets, a tambourine, or a guitar dotted around.

Philippe Starck designs Maison Heler Metz

Now, 771 miles north of the Spanish capital, Starck has unveiled another hotel, one just as grounded in fiction as in form. In Metz’s Amphitheatre neighbourhood, Maison Heler Metz, part of the Curio Collection by Hilton, makes an arresting first impression: a towering brutalist base topped with a perfectly preserved 19th-century Lorraine house. This nine-storey monolith, housing 104 rooms and suites, joins a city already dense with Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Art Nouveau influences –and somehow doesn’t feel entirely out of place.

‘Maison Heler is a game on uprooted roots,’ Starck says. ‘A symbolic construction of Lorraine, whose historical identities create an inspiring intermediate state. The fortress-like houses of the region served as the central soil for this project, and the surreal story of its owner, Manfred Heler.’ That imagined owner is the protagonist of The Meticulous Life of Manfred Heler, a fictional tale written by Starck himself and published by Allary Éditions, which became the conceptual backbone of the hotel’s design.

Starck recounts: ‘Manfred Heler has inherited his parents’ beautiful house. As an orphan, he finds himself all alone in this mansion surrounded by a large park. One day, suddenly, the earth begins to tremble. He looks around and realises that he’s rising into the air. He climbs and climbs, until the shaking stops. His house has been extruded, as if a cookie-cutter had arrived from below, sliced off a piece of the earth, and mounted it vertically.’

Needless to say, there’s nothing cookie-cutter about the look of Maison Heler Metz. Guests (and curious non-guests) can access the house in the sky by heading to the ninth floor, home to the hotel’s restaurant, La Maison de Manfred. Open from breakfast through to a final nightcap, it offers a warm take on comforting French cuisine, with scenic views over the city below.

Inside, fiction continues to bleed into form. Warm, tactile details add a sense of familiarity – think natural wood and leather furniture, terracotta tiles, stacked logs, and central columns wrapped in deep green, embossed leather. Meanwhile, Starck’s daughter, Ara, created 19 stained glass windows for the restaurant, including one monumental piece that bathes the dining room in a cathedral-like wash of colour.

Maison Heler Metz, Curio Collection by Hilton, is located at 31 Rue Jacques Chirac, 57000 Metz, France.