Glorious GMs 2021 - Leading The Way [Webinar]

[Music] [Music] greetings ladies and gentlemen it gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this week's uh edition of thursday talks at ihma in association with our media partners today's traveler we have an exciting team lined up for you today today's webinar is themed as glorious gms where our panel of dynamic gms uh will provide an insight on leadership perspectives contemporary challenges and best practices in managing hotel operations and stakeholders i feel extremely proud to state that all our panelists are alumni of ihma who are proving the metal in the hospitality industry and are holding the ihma flag high so welcome welcome to this session let me start by introducing the panelists to you our first panelist is kadambri sabarwal talwar who's the hotel manager at four points by sheraton bengaluru whitefield kadambri is from the class of 2001 and is a seasoned sales professional our next panelist is gaurav uh general manager jihan palace bhopal gaurav is also from the class of 2001 and comes from a strong operations background our third panelist is supreet singh general manager taj theog resort and spa shimla supreet is from the class of 2005 and comes from a strong accommodations background our fourth and finest panelists who will be joining us very shortly uh is mr rohan sabling who's the area general manager for accord hotels chennai rohan is also from the class of 2001 and specializes in finance and strategy thank you so much uh for taking your time out from your busy schedules and to be with us today uh the format i'll just i'll just introduce you to the format of today's session uh today's panel discussion will consist of a round of moderated questions to each panelist followed by a q a session we will hear our panelists as we hear our panelists i request our audience to type the questions in the chat box one of our digital team members will collate the questions to be put up to the panelists at the end of our discussion round so let us kick off the discussion uh i will start by putting in a common question to all our panelists how has your journey been post it and what are some of the highlights that uh were instrumental in your career progression and i think uh let's let's go with the lady first over to you thanks richard i'm extremely excited to be on this call uh you know the photograph at the back brings a lot of nostalgia and a lot of memories uh into perspective but uh yes i mean to your question aichma was a a super enriching journey and i think what happened after that was a lot of falling down on the feet learning how to survive um it's actually been um i mean it's been a very fulfilling journey right uh through item a and then the culmination of where we are today i think it's been the quest of knowledge that's uh kept all of us going um there's been a whole lot of revolution there's uh been a change in how people look at how hospitality industry is the hotel management how does hotel management work uh originally when we came in we were only supposed to know about the four basic principles of hotel management and then you went into the traditional streams i think for me it was really breaking the myth and going into the sales and marketing vertical uh proving my metal over there um it was a fascinating field uh however towards the uh middle of my entire sales and marketing career i realized that i did want to go back to the roots and experience what operations is all about well i started with that so from from there on it was more about how do you really become a hotel manager gen manager so here i am today in this part of my uh career where i have chosen to go back to the roots explore a little bit more keep learning and really bring my skills and marketing to so all in all a very fulfilling and enriching journey so far thank you thank you for that i'm sure that's very exciting for everybody who's listening in uh i'll move on to gaurav your perspective on this well uh one is uh thank you for having me over here on this panel and uh you know kadamri put it very well in words you know hotels is about a lifestyle and as long as you love what you do or rather enjoy what you do uh you know you're in a great profession i mean i joke about this to a lot of my colleagues i said i say where else we get to drink at work you know i mean and literally you are you know you're on a first name basis with uh the who's who of the state or the country eat big movie stars be big you know politicians and uh it's a great life there's lovely food you get to travel uh you get to meet exciting people and this is just the start of it so to a lot of the people who are currently in in the college and who are just starting on this exciting journey uh i would wish you all the very best uh you know hotels is a great life contrary to what uh people you should think in the past or you're going to be cleaning uh you know dirty plates it's not really that as long as you put your heart in it right at the beginning and you cross those uh very necessary uh hurdles or other steps in early on in your career the rest of the journey is lovely and i've enjoyed my last 20 years in this industry no regrets that's excellent that's been some journey i'm sure last 20 years with all the challenges attached and the sense of fulfillment that i can see you know as as you explain your journey that's brilliant uh supreme uh over to you thank you very much kavina uh first of all thank you to you and the ultimate fraternity item opportunity for bringing giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts over here and of course being a part of this panel uh journey for style for me has been very very very exciting uh it's been 15 to 16 years since we graduated but it actually feels as if it was yesterday when we were standing in the uh in our graduation ceremony at the auditorium followed by our function at the tra now known as vivanta all of us have spent a lot of time there uh yeah i had the good fortune to uh have an opportunity to work with the good hopeless very good hotels over here in the group and also to learn and interact with the stalwarts of the industry which actually you know gave us a lot gave me a more perspective i'd see it as a whole has given me a lot of uh assignments to be in different geographies and uh take up hotel assignments in bhutan and bombay and in delhi and now that brings me to shimla uh most thankful to ism and the isu to you know show this confidence in me and bringing me where i am today yeah thank you so thank you for that supreme yes uh definitely it has been a learning journey as it is for as it has been for all of us as we continue and we continue to learn you know and and grow so it's it's wonderful to listen to uh what you have had to say uh let's move on now uh i have a question for each of the panelists so uh i will go back to uh kadambari uh my question for you cardinali is uh how did you navigate the sales and marketing landscape during the lockdown and what are your guiding principles to manage changing stakeholders expectations so a very apt question actually uh i think being from the sales and marketing vertical was something that led me into a phase where i could really connect with the customers during this time right um you know when you come from this kind of a vertical you do understand that there is an emotional connect either that you built up over a period of time or that you need to build up over a period of time i think that sense uh gave me a little bit of a push into being able to handle the situation a little more normally than some of the other people it was really about being transparent and assuring the customers that i'm there for them right and once you build that emotional connect then you go to nick is where uh you know that you can be the go-to person for them a lot of things happen through the entire phase of code and which continues to happen which is out of the normal uh unprecedented as the word is and uh in that if you are the one go to person that has been um you know that has been around for your customers you can show the flexibility you can keep building on the loyalty and i think that is something that i continue to do even today as in when the customers call or you know you constantly engage to be able to be in their face as and when they require or if you have a rapport you can connect with them over a period of time what that does is it gives bills the trust it builds the assurance and it really does have them coming back to you if you see through the pandemic there's actually been a whole lot that has changed right you've had to adapt but maybe the customers haven't been that adaptive so for a lot of them we've had to educate them and say you know what the journey now for a customer the end-to-end journey has really changed um it's about how you live in the new normal it's about how the hygiene and the sanitation comes into play so how you really educate them through that process is what builds a further trust it helps to educate them because they can educate their companies their new age travelers and let's not forget the newest traveler really is very very digital native they're extremely savvy when it comes to social media they read up a lot they have this quest for knowledge um you can't pull a full rule over them so it's always better to work hand in hand with the customer uh stay true to the ground listen to them and then be able to emulate a plan that is really going to give them that sense of trust and security when they want to come back to you so all in all um i'd like to say that through the sales and marketing phase is where i've been able to really keep the conversations and the engagement going um now when you talk about how do you build the trust or how do you go about uh you know really looking at what are the things that can help you with evolving the change i think it is being confident uh being in control of the situation now you can only be in control of the situation if you know what is going around you um so really um if you understand the change you understand what's in it for each and every one of your stakeholders whether it's ownership whether it's customers can you go ahead and say i understand i am here's what i'm going to do about it so it's really about breaking down each and every piece of what you have learned and can incorporate into a plan which you put forward once you do that you are more in control of your destiny or the forward thinking and that gives a sense of control and assurance to the customers as well as the ownership so if you really look at it both are same sides of uh sorry two different sides of the same coin right um they both want the same thing whether it's an owner or whether it's a customer and it's really about how you communicate the change how you plan the change and how you execute the change and i think finding it was more about how nimble and agile we could be uh it's extremely important that we have to be agile in this world because it's ever changing if we are not nimble and agile then you've sort of like lost the plot so uh one of the things that had to be put in the foray was being really agile and up-to-date and you know being at speed and help of things to uh communicate and communicate and communicate because i can't emphasize that communication has been the president to building the trust and being able to overcome whatever nuances or whatever unprecedented times that we had to the best of our abilities so really it is back to just leading the assurance and being able to communicate back to your stakeholders yes i completely agree with you i think the whole idea is to remain connected with your customers you know communication is extremely important showing empathy agility all that helps in building trust building loyalty because we need our customers to stay with us we need them to get us more customers going forward and i completely agree to what you're saying so uh that that's that's that's brilliant uh thank you for that i'll move on to gaurav uh gaurav how did you counter operational challenges created by the pandemic and what according to you will be the new way of managing hotel operations going forward all right so rashad the you know it was so let me give you a brief background about our hotel company we own four hotels uh in central india two of them are in gobal itself and uh you know double legit uh ars and two of our jungle lodges are about three hours south of where we are in bhopal and again these jungle lodges operate in the range of about 30 to 40 000 a night as a standard rate now what's happened uh during the pandemic is that you know all of us were caught off guard but as long as we were honest to our clients and transparent in our dealings i think that has really helped us sail through this uh difficult time you know i'm going to take two examples that happened with me very very recently so one is uh you know i i i was looking for a quote for a banquet event in puna very well-known hotel i won't take the name they gave me a quote of 4200 rupees per person for the first week of august and this is for a very small gathering of about 30 people mainly family and i was shocked so i called up i obviously knew the chef so i called up and i asked the chef what the actual apc was at banquets and he says so we end up giving a rate of between you know 1500 to 1700 but the quote that came out to me obviously thinking that you know this person is not from here he doesn't know the market was at 4 200 rupees that's the kind of margin the second thing is what is happening across the country in terms of rates hotels were charging premiums i mean of course they are they have full right but people are charging premiums in the range of you know eight thousand ten thousand rupees those same hotels currently are down to rock bottom rates when you can get good hotel rooms in fives or hotels across the country at two and a half to three thousand rupees now that causes a lot of distrust with the clients uh i'll very happily say that that is not something that we did or are doing we never charge exorbitant rates uh before we've not we never dropped our rates during the pandemic and in fact that has helped us come back very very strong and so i started with my with the oberoi group that's a group that i have utmost respect for the taj of course because that is where my roots are i spend some time with the leela with ananda but i don't know of too many hotel companies i won't even say units but i don't know of too many hotel companies who've retained their complete stuff and for me this was the you know this was really the the test when somebody asked which is the best hotel company in the country currently of course there are with all due respect to the bigger chains and the brands but none or there was not even a single well-established company that could hold on to its people or you know or could not do salary cuts and and the various things that they did i can very proudly see that i did or rather we did not let go of any stuff since march of 2020 we've not done any salary cuts and we've uh sorry i just got a call we've not done any salary cuts and we've retained everyone somewhere somewhere along the line we as a set of managers realize that people are strengthened so we uh we were in touch with 100 percent of our staff while the pandemic was going on and everyone i mean you know whatever 25 30 or 50 of the staff that was coming into work everyone was tasked with being in touch with clients so i had my bandwidth captains my f and b uh here on welcome i had my bandwidth captains i had my fnb staff receptionist sales people literally top to bottom everyone tasked with calling at least 50 clients per day and these calls are not about asking for business these calls were about asking about and inquiring about the good health and in the course of the conversation if there were any questions about why are you guys open are you still serving food and all obviously then it was a revenue-based thing wherein we offered i mean when we told what we were doing because of all these things that we did during the pandemic we were able to hit the ground running right from the first minute that we opened operations uh i was the hotel was sold out last night the hotel is sold out tonight and uh you know we're doing amazing f b revenues we've done that this month june was a lovely month and uh yeah so i mean it all boils down to trust it's simply trust we didn't charge exorbitant rates then the rates are extremely healthy for the part of the country that we are in in fact uh you know probably my revenues are far higher than some of the larger hotels in the metro cities but uh when a client gets consistent uh you know responses beat whether he calls the gm who's a friend or whether he calls a steward or whether he calls the ownership as long as a client does not feel that he or she is getting cheated you know he always keeps coming back and that is what we we as a group have focused on over the last year and a half be honest be transparent with your dealings and as long as you know you show care and empathy towards your clients people will keep coming back um i think that really sums up did i miss something yeah so uh i i understand what you're saying you're very right uh you know building trust building empathy getting the customer back exactly what kadambari is also saying even in operations do you see there's going to be any change going forward as far as hotel operations are concerned in the new normal do you see any further uh what it used to be and what you think it's going to be in the future do you think it's going to be any different of course i mean the entire i mean all the graphs all the data that everyone had pre-pandemic none of that holds to any longer you know so whenever i mean if i might have had a peak in my city in terms of occupancy on a wednesday and a thursday that entire trend has changed it suddenly shifted to a weekend which i'm sure which is the probably the case with a lot of other cities as well but suddenly weekends are sold out i get a very high occupancy on a monday and a tuesday fnb is consistently busy seven days a week lunches are very busy people are you know i mean none of the trends that i had earlier are applicable now the other thing of course that we've seen is there is a lot more involvement of uh the ownership be the owning family the owning company in individual assets and uh like i you know i mean i'm going back to the word trust it's all about you know the perception of trust the perception of hygiene the perception the perception of how important how what kind of importance you give to sanitization within the company within uh and how you take care of your employees i think that's really paramount right now uh thank you thank you um yes i just want to add to what uh gaurav said uh you know i think there is a little bit in terms of operational shifts that we can already see and then moving forward i think it is going to happen because pretty much all of us are faking it you know another uh interesting thing is that there is going to be a shift to a leaner uh and a more efficient system across the companies um it's the need of the hour exactly like how gaurav said you know the emergency is not the same the trends aren't the same um fnb is uh hit uh in terms of hit positively in terms of the revenge tourism kind of a thing staycations have come in so it's really more cyclical at this point in time but what that really does is that you need to be a lot more efficient hold your people more accountable and really make sure that your organization is a lot more leaner than what it was earlier agreed agreed very well spoken uh khadamri and daurav thank you for that perspective uh we'll take a little pit stop uh thank you rohan for joining us uh it's it's brilliant uh i know you've been a very busy person and uh it's great to have you on uh today's session i'll just come to you give me a moment i'm just moving to supreme on a question and then i'm going to uh have a detailed chat with you rohan so uh i'll just move to supreme you've had a great experience dealing with the luxury segment so what according to you are the expectations of the new luxury segment customer and how do you propose to manage these expectations in the new normal thank you very much professor that's a very nice question uh to be very frank lakshmi has a whole new meaning now there has been a paradigm shift from being tangible to incorporating more of intangible touch points in terms of luxury the intangible aspects of luxury what we see today basically includes exclusivity uh privileges and bespoke experiences a lot of luxury hotels and resorts right now are going one step forward to providing transcending experiences to our guests rather than the orthodox service and product experience which we have seen earlier uh we all know that what we are going to do now is to practice the philosophy of providing these transcending experiences to our guests with an assurance of health hygiene and safety that's the paramount of everything uh here if i talk about uh shimla and through what we do uh we have some exclusive experiences uh uh based on our natural beauty which surrounds us uh we are sitting at around about eight thousand feet beautiful valleys beautiful uh greenery all around us the current temperature right now is around about 20 22 degrees other places in india are soaring high in terms of temperature we have these beautiful gazebos experiencing experiences where we uh have uh you know binding experiences amongst the clouds where clouds are descending towards towards the guests people are enjoying their spectacular nature walks we also have this concept of farm to plate dining concept where we have the produce from the hotel itself from hotel gardens which we use uh in in the in the in the philippines and which guarantees the organic and freshness and quality control now coming to the managing of expectations the priority is health hygiene and safety both for our guests and for our associates and they're ensuring there are no uh corners which are cut over there and no compromises at any point of time we have all in the industry and around have embraced the new normal it has now become the way of life we know how it is going to be and now it's the time that we moved from new normal to next normal uh worry on me what do i mean by the next normal next normal is something to do with digital transfer the transformation which has happened in in many of our companies and our hotels uh we still need to do a lot more with a lot less and also the cycle of learning unlearning and relearning will continue for all of us uh in terms of what you told me about the managing of expectation anticipation responsiveness and agility in decision making are going to be the key for all of us going further we just spoke about revenge tourism which is at its peak right now uh and the guests want to get away as much as possible uh however the question which arises is what is at what cost do they actually want to go further with the health and hygiene standards and the best practices in place and the keen sense of awareness and safety around us i think it's we will all you know stand the test of time where we will go beyond this pandemic leveraging that confidence to the guest and establish leadership and hospitality with trust i think that is the most important from all of our side thank you thank you thank you for that i i hear what you're saying you know uh health hygiene safety um uh technology transformation all that has taken precedence today and whatever we are doing in whichever field we are in and yes i completely agree anticipation responsiveness and agility are going to be the key uh that will drive us in the future so uh thank you so much for your perspective on that supreme i really appreciate that uh i will now move on to rohan rohan we've had a very discussion with our panelists and i would like to just start by asking you a very simple question and i'm sure uh our audience are going to be very intrigued to know what has been your journey since ihma okay since you left the college how has your journey been and what are some of the highlights of that journey as you've today reached the position of an area general manager for such a renowned hotel chain based out of chennai so we'd like to hear uh how has it been for you so firstly i love your background and [Music] you know it's always that that particular call photo always brings some amazing memories and then [Music] uh sorry i was just calling it so so fantastic seeing you uh guys and uh i think for me the journey started even before i got into college and then of course that that was the formative years and uh all the years did everything from from food and beverage uh to managing resorts to managing hotels i've been with icon now for about nine years and moved about five hotels uh so it's it's a very interesting one because in chennai we have approximately seven hotels with over a thousand rooms and uh chennai chennai is always exciting and i think each step of this sorry can uh get your feedback uh okay is this better yeah uh we are able to hear you okay i don't know which part did you hear or lose me i'm sorry okay anyway i'll just help you so over the years after college it's been it's been quite a journey uh from managing resorts in indian companies to international companies hotels food and beverage trying to transform myself every two years and keep up with with some amazing people that pass out of college and and uh come up into the industry and and literally look like an entrepreneur i think that's the one thing that i've learned over the years i i managed a few businesses of myself to conquerous came back through you know the safety and the opportunity of hotels and now it's been about nine years without her so i think a brilliant brilliant journey lots of learning and it's constantly evolving that's what i think keeps me interested uh till date and then hope it will continue to get my attention as the years passes off excellent and uh my next question before i move to the next question i have a small appeal for all our audiences if you have any questions please post it on the live chat here so once we've uh finished our discussion with rohan we're going to go into a q a session so uh please start posting your uh questions on the live chat so the digital team can start collating that so moving on to you rohan my question to you is uh in the past 18 months what have been some of the tough decisions that you had to take and what were some of your leadership challenges and learnings okay so so you know the world's totally changed and i think even more so for further plans but like they say never let a good prices go to waste i i think all of us sitting out here including supreme uh i have not met you before but great to e-meet you in a way so i i think uh we we all had to quickly adapt and uh there's these 18 months have been you know out of as they say a lot of crisis comes clarity out of chaos comes clarity for me as i speak to you today we are in a much much better position and we have to do a lot of unlearning and learning over period of the last 18 months it was if i put it mildly almost equal to shock treatment and sometimes shocks work positively sometimes not so and i think in this case it has been working positively because yes there were a lot of these these practical day-to-day decisions at the hotel level and some at a corporate level and some are the ownership level so it's it's impacted not one section of hospitality everything from hotels uh owners to management companies to general managers to every single micro person in the organization i think it is impacted all and i don't think so any other event in the past few years has had such an impact across levels so in terms of i i wouldn't call them tough decisions i would say these were things that we needed to survive and and survival is a funny thing it makes you do things that you don't really realize but it gets you there somehow or the other so i i think for us it was how can we keep all our hotels open because it was about the stigma that is probably attached to the hotel closing and reopening closing and reopening it and i think it sometimes uh shakes the foundation not only of the team but also the owners as well as your guests right it is that that thing that if a hotel is closed for whether a short or a significant amount of time uh why did it happen right and and no one cares for the back story i guess they only care for them now and and what's it going to be in the future so one is keeping the hotels open making sure the owners are well funded or at least we give them a little helping hand as management companies uh to ensure that the business flows through uh and and literally thinking of new avenues first on let me speak on the top line side and then let me tell you about a few of the bottom line things so from the top line it goes what kind of business is there and can you get every dollar that lies on anyone's table can you pull it towards you right so whether it was business contingency plans or bcp business as we call it how do we ensure companies are quickly giving us that bcp business because bcps exist for exact reasons where you don't know what hit you but you need to quickly react and that's where hotels come uh the second is a lot of the business hotels you know i i don't really uh i left goa approximately three years back so i'm going to talk more in context of business hotels i i think the adaptation was really quick if there were one of those time capsules that you went in and came out a new person that's what we had to do uh becoming how business hotels can literally transform into hotels that cater to leisure because at one point of corn with all these stock and start lockdowns i think the leisure segment business hotels quickly realized that business segment is probably going to take about anywhere between 24 months to 28 months to divide and the leisure segment is what uh was on even work from home needed the leisure pit so i think for from chennai for our hotels in specific with that kind of a large inventory we quickly worked on who are the ones that are not going back into their respective countries can we do repatriation can we do uh bcps can we can we become the most uh important choice for weddings could we get the leisure and be a resort and a hotel at the same time so it it took a lot of that connection and i think with anything that changes it needs a wholehearted support of the entire team so like gaurav mentioned sometime back connection is the key connection with your team i had almost got 60 percent of our teams working from home or they were on leave to manage uh payroll and so on and so forth and i think uh literally with every team every week we connected we did even more time also in a in the regular scenario we probably have a town hall once a month but i think things were changing for dyna that we had to connect uh with people almost every week so it was about pulling the excess fat right and then and losing fat ask me losing fat has not it has is never easy because you fall in love with the people that work for you and you're always very passionate about them so was there a possibility to restructure in such a way that that it didn't make anyone walk on crush class as well as trying to meet the expectations of their families and commitments and so on and so forth so i think that is a bit i think if there was something that i think out of it is always respect the the power of the human ambition right and i and i think all of my team members across our hotels we had almost about 900 team members in seven hotels in china and and it was their wholehearted support they understood the problem and we were fully transparent right and i think i see that echoing in in whether it is that transparency is the key to win and be in the game and keep the trust of your people because things will change right we are perpetually optimistic people as hoteliers as human beings and i think uh number one thing was was that to the upkeep of the hotel right when you are trying to sort of cut down costs how do you make sure the hotels whenever this this entire 12-month period or whatever ends the customers and the guests come back do they still perceive your hotel is fresh and buzzing and vibrant so we took that down time to actually rethink every part of our our customer journey right our guest journal fall in love with with the guest and not with your product or your service because the products and service are interchangeable so we did even more to connect back to our guests we had to cut a few elements of flab or two elements of service and we had to i think calm owner knows because every owner is going to be coming back with what's going to happen in the future uh till when are we going to make an operating loss and when can you make an operating profit and i think managing multiple stakeholders was the third most important thing and the fourth is quickly learning how there's sanitization and safety feature in every little step that you take at the prepare so for me i think the tough parts were rethinking reorganizing recalibrating so many times in the same year normally you would make a strategy you would follow the two years one year and you would calibrate it once every quarter but this required us to have only a short range thinking of maybe 30 days and what's next is anyone's guess so yeah that's the first part of your question and uh challenges and learnings i i think um the challenges outweigh the learnings and and for us we now have started thinking of food and beverage in a whole different way we started looking at online probably previously five star hotels had this little stigma that you know take away unless it is uh you know maybe a 5 or a 10k order it's not really worth that time but today it's part of survival and anything that fills our kitty is important so i think the hotels adapted to learning how to do online as well as as standalone restaurant school we learned that that you know perhaps everything you don't need to have large soil because when you're trying to cut down costs of amc's etc you don't need to really have these large servers a large army of id people you probably need to go on to cloud so we started thinking towards cloud based uh applications we transformed the way our guest service focuses we made it really warm and connected and i think the power of the team you know invest in a great team because whether uh hell or sunshine they're always going to be coming up with new ideas and supporting you so i think four times a year changing the hotel is no small achievement and i think that was the biggest learning the power of the people and if you win the trust of your guests that trust stays for a long time even during the bad days so yes i think that that was thank you so much for your perspective rohan i i understand from what everybody has been saying is it's very important to build loyalty and trust of your customers and not only your customers but all your stakeholders and what you highlighted is very important in today's time when you have your staff or many of your staff working remotely it's to connect with them regularly and ensure that they're all there together they also understand that uh the management the leadership you know supports them okay empathizes with them and there is always help around the corner if they need anything you know so that is building trust within building trust outside and of course like you rightly said rethink reorganize uh be quick on your feet to adapt to changes these are the things that uh help organizations move forward quickly you know and stay abreast with what they have to do so that was excellent uh thank you so much uh kadambari gaurav supreeth rohan for all your insights and i'm sure our audience have a lot of questions after having heard you so i'm going to uh now request our digital team uh to start our q a round and if we could uh have the first question uh highlighted here and we could take it so uh our first question comes from ocean uh ocean asks uh what major challenges do you foresee in ramping up the existing business in the phase of unlocking it's open anybody would like to go for it please feel free i think i'd like to attempt that uh one of uh i mean one amongst the many um challenges that we foresee is not being able forecast right uh there doesn't seem to be a very clear future um it's great it's anybody's guess um we thought at the end of the first wave that the second wave is not going to come at the end of second wave we hope that the third wave will be a lot milder but we don't know what the future really has to say so one of the pitfalls of uh unlocking the business really is around the forecasting and when you're not able to forecast you're not able to see what kind of manning do i need to have what kind of preemptive waves do i need to put in place um the only sure shot that exists is that you need to take care of the sanitation the hygiene and the security of your guests right so um i think for me at least one of the major challenges is going to be able to really have that magic wand or the crystal ball and say how do we go about it um we can be proactive and we will be proactive because that's the only best way to keep ourselves afloat but that i do see as a big challenge you know i just like to add to that uh a major challenge i mean in addition to what kadambari said is uh to be at the helm of things is trying to understand what the government is going to do next i think something that has become very evident is over the last year is that we've realized that every separate state is doing their own thing you know they have their own game going on and there are just there is just no clarity in the kind of rules that are applicable for travelers and hotels survive on travelers you know i still don't know if i have to travel to bangalore what are the kind of rules where do i find out what rules are going to be applicable to me there versus when i come back and this lack of clarity you know there's a classical example rohan might know this better goa tourism announced uh you know a lot of these uh incentives for travelers to come and travel to goa three days later the local government announced lockdown and this was hilarious because you know people made plans people reached goa and then suddenly it's it's like you know one arm the government is not talking to the other and really i think with this entire political scenario in the country with bjp and congress and everything else that is happening which is now literally boiling down to you know different rules and different regulations state per district per zone that's affecting travel and uh yes till the time we don't know what's going to happen with travel regulations restrictions we will not be able to forecast business or rather even make plans for the future so i will agree absolutely with gandabrai what you have said in terms of forecasting and changing ever-changing regulations just one uh one more aspect of it is in terms of you know forecasting and then cancellation and the change in plan we'll have to be very very agile in our decision making in our cancellations policies uh in uh due to the the situation we are in and we'll have to have that trust in our guest and empathy to put it forward because at the end of the day uh things will get better and we will need to have that kind of uh rest in the in the brand uh and the guests will come back to us agree thank you thank you for that extensive uh perspective of the challenges that is facing us let's move on to the next question can we have the next question here the next question is from anurag uh she would like to know what would be your advice to smaller owner driven hotels or home stays i'll take that and great to see you even in these unusual circumstances and me work together at one point in time so it's it's very nice to see her uh so that that's why let me try this yeah you know for for someone who you know stays extensively at a lot of these smaller hotels uh i think the focus has become the the sanitization hygiene etc is is definitely paramount right but safety is a perception right and and you don't always see the guy that that cleans up the rooms or the hotels or whatever so i think how can you build up on the perception of safety number one two uh experience driven when people have gone through a literally existential crisis over the last 18 to 20 or months right i i think they are looking for that little bit of a warm very family or familiar touch the experience driven thing is is something that while hotels try to adapt but the size sometimes prevents them from doing it hopefully but in smaller home stores and hotels if you can bring out more of the culture of the place you can you can give bring out your personality it's not always giving about only what the guest runs but a little bit of your family a little bit of your culture sharing those little stories and the experiences that are possible within let's say five or ten kilometers 15 kilometer radius of your place i think if that would continue it would be amazing and only look at larger companies to help your distribution because the more visibility the more the chances are that you have guests because guests don't want to really stay in large hotels where there are 300 people in the restaurant they want to stay where probably there are five rooms and on your breakfast table you're only sharing the table with one other family and that for them is also a safety section so keep it small but keep it really experienced and really personal thank you thank you for that uh rohan uh could we have the next question please we have the next question from mr keith phillips what are the contactless or touch free technologies that have been introduced during the pandemic at the front office restaurants housekeeping and food production so majorly from an operations uh perspective so i will take it foreign had done a lot of uh top resources in terms of how to make the front office the aspect of a lot of signature taking a lot of contact which happens at that point of time to make it completely contact less now we are ready and in a lot of hotels it's been rolled out so that one doesn't really need to uh sign anything as such on the paper everything has been put on the computer you will get an email you click on the link registration card is there you just need to put in your details everything is your online signature sign it on your device itself and it sends it back which gets updated on the people than the pms um same thing going on to the checkout part where you one doesn't need to actually give a credit card or cash or anything else in terms of making the payment your bill can be put on your your email address or your phone you just have to check it from that find it send it across and make an online payment like all of us do anywhere when we are taking tickets or anything else so these are such certain contactless uh processors which are helping us a lot in uh making sure that the the customer and the guest trust and customer hygiene factors have been taken care of yeah i i couldn't agree more i think at this point in time you know just adding to what supreme said uh there's a lot of work that is underway in most of the organizations on the touch free or contactless piece so we operate as marriott we operate under the married bon voyage umbrella and really what we're looking to do is to see that every customer journey touch point how can we really help make that contact yes so um in our world we have something known as a mobile key um in addition to what supreme mentioned apart from just coming in having a link which is sure to check in at the hotel all you need to do is have your married convoy membership and you're gonna get a mobile key and you can really check into the room without having any interference or human touch to it um as we move down um you also have a simpler kind of an interface which is being developed to each and every kind of an amenity within the room apart from that if you come into the restaurant we have list menus we're looking at contactless payments and um moreover we also have a contactless checkout so you know looking at the government regulations and things like that there are certain things that are definitely a go ahead and there are certain things that are working progress but within the merit system we're taking that very very strongly and almost all of the touch points are contactless now yeah so uh thank you i think that more or less covers uh the question out here uh could we have the next question please we have about six minutes more to go uh that's the time we had stipulated so let's see how probably will take one more question after this and that should suffice as far as the time is concerned so uh the question now here is from mr sanjeev kumar das don't you think that owners of hotels or brands have actively participated in the decision making about operations finances of a hotel across india mr das completely completely completely agree with you uh i don't think there's been a time where it's been more collaborative than now it's been the owners as well as the management and in a lot of cases uh uh you know third parties that have come together to be able to make the right decision in these current times um as an owner you obviously look at your asset and you look at how it's being managed um and in these times if you're not hand in hand with the management then there is an issue with that so um i i just think and given the experience that we've had in the 18 months it's very very important to be over engaging like i said right in the beginning and also collaborated so yes it has to be a hand in hand with the ownership as well as a management to say yes these are the decisions that we think would be the right ones to uh really benefit in terms of the positioning as well as the customers and in terms of financial aspects of or whatever moving forward yeah thank you i think uh gaurav also had a perspective he uh probably wanted to add to that uh what i was saying yes obviously like you know these uh times over the last 16 or 18 months were uh nobody knew what is right you know i mean it was an ever evolving situation every two weeks every 10 days you know there was something new that was being spoken about people were talking about these sanitation tunnels you know we were almost about to invest in that and suddenly there was a dictating that no this is not good for fabric it's causing irritation in the skin and no one really knew what to do so what we experienced in our things there were lots of debates internally there were lots of discussions and eventually we uh you know it was all about all about collaborative thinking and decisions that were made based on you know extensive research but yes the owners had to have a very very active role during the last 18 months of competitions thank you thank you for that i think that's that's absolutely clear even i remember when rohan was putting his point down he actually did mention right at the beginning that managing owner expectations and working closely with them was very important in the times that had gone past and even going forward so uh that's very relative to this uh this particular question uh i think we have just enough time for one last question so uh to our viewers i'm sorry uh as time does not permit us to take all questions uh you could still we could have our digital team collate all other questions that we've not been able to take and we could even share it with our panelists on email and if you have certain responses even point wise that can be shared back we will send it back to all the audiences whose questions are uh pending so if that's okay with you we can take that forward so our last question for today is from dhammudiwala sanaya wants to know when you talk about change during this pandemic in your opinion are these temporary changes or will they become permanent going forward once things go back to the olden days can i can i start this one yes rohan please okay i think we've tasted blood with the changes that have happened uh in the last few months i think there's no going back maybe a few things would be back but more or less i think the streamlining of the service has happened it matches what customers pay and what customers want rather than having an excessive over-the-top upgrade to service product design etc and to i think few of those things we were just it needed something to shake us up for example at accor we are experimenting with a week day and a week end part time we are experimenting with flexi four hours a day this was already there but as that was that was absolutely taboo for us to even think of things like that but today there are some amazing people who just want to work during the weekends or the weekdays they want the weekends for themselves and and that talent pool i can tell you our experience is outstandingly good they've committed it's like they're squeezing together the seven days of passion into two days of hard work and four days of whatever that they do so i think these things have made us realize that you can take great people even if they don't work for you permanently and and we if we learn to forecast better as kaduna said we exactly know how many people do we need for a particular day of the week and i think this has led to a big change in perspective it keeps the team more fluid it keeps our decision making more fluid so it would stay most of this would stay alive thank you thank you for that rohan uh that i think sums it all for us as far as today's session is concerned uh a very big thank you to kadambari rohan for you know all the interaction that we've had it's been very fruitful uh the last one hour has been extremely engaging and i'm sure people who've joined us live and people who want to watch us uh even going forward are going to gain a lot from this interaction so thank you once again for your time and for uh you know joining us today and uh i would also like to pass my gratitude to the digital team for working tirelessly to ensure that we were able to have this uh wonderful session uh last but not the least a sincere thanks to all the uh audience who've been patiently listening to us and who've been engaging with us the lovely questions that we've had and i'm sure there are many more questions and we'll make sure that these questions are answered so uh with that we come to a close of uh today's session we will be back again next week with another enriching panel discussion uh in our ongoing thursday talk series which will be uh glorious gm's part two uh so until then stay safe stay strong thank you so much stay safe everybody take care thank you

2021-07-20 23:06

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