The restaurant and nightclub will be modelled on the lines of (above) China House and (top) China House Lounge in Grand Hyatt Mumbai

Ten years after coming to Calcutta, Hyatt Regency has decided it’s time to let the big boys (and girls) play at night. According to Arun Saraf, managing director of Asian Hotels East Ltd, the Bypass hotel will move towards adding a nightclub — and a Chinese restaurant — to its bouquet.

A new nightclub when the existing ones are forced shut at 11.45pm? “I have faith in Calcutta,” said Saraf in an exclusive chat with t2 on Friday evening an hour before the Salt Lake property kicked off its 10-year celebrations.

“These timing changes are temporary.... I think it’s going to come back. If young people demand it, nobody can stop it. They are the biggest votebank,” said Saraf, adding, “It’s very unfair, young people also need to have a life.”

The restaurant and nightclub will take “at least a year” to open and will follow the lines of China House in Mumbai’s Grand Hyatt, where both co-exist in the same space. “We want to bring something like China House at the Grand Hyatt Mumbai. The surveys here have shown that Chinese is probably the most-wanted food. And the plan to bring in a new nightclub kind of place is to make it more happening,” he said.

These plans were part of a Rs 300-crore investment that Saraf was planning to pump into Hyatt Regency’s expansion two years ago. “We actually had drawn up plans around two years back to expand by adding around 50-60 service apartments and around 200 more rooms and a new banquet facility. Then our reviews showed that the demand is not as robust. But with more hotels coming in (Westin, Taj Gateway, The Lalit, Novotel, Radisson and J.W. Marriott will all open in the next few years) I don’t think there is any need to build more rooms,” said Saraf, who has six properties in India and Nepal with a total inventory of over 2,000 rooms, with a majority of them are being run by Hyatt.

Where will the restaurant-nightclub be located in the hotel? “Under La Cucina. We have the space in the building, which was left open for some time. We’re trying to think of some drawings, get some designers to come in. There is even a plan to revamp Guchhi and make it a contemporary space,” Saraf signed off.