The 287-room Lemon Tree Premier hotel at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport features a dramatic view of planes landing and taking off, but it has no guests to see them.
The hotel - one of 12 built or planned next to India's busiest airport at a cost totalling more than $2 billion - has been unable to open as it awaits security clearance from police worried about its proximity to an active runway. The cluster of hotels known as Aerocity,
on a site bigger than 40 American football fields, was approved by the government six years ago.
India is eager to attract foreign investment to revive economic growth that is stalling at a decade low and help plug a current account deficit that has widened to a record. Yet bureaucratic hurdles including a lack of coordination among authorities still plague big-ticket projects, such as the hotel development at the capital's showpiece $3 billion airport.
"On the one hand the prime minister wants to drive investment into the country, the finance minister is travelling halfway around the world to get investment, but on the other hand these things spoil the country's reputation," said Rahul Pandit, CEO of Lemon Tree Hotels.
The Lemon Tree Premier and 208-room Red Fox have been ready to open since late December and are losing a combined 2 million rupees ($36,800) a day, said Pandit of Lemon Tree, which is backed by U.S. private equity firm Warburg Pincus.