|
When Priya Paul took the reins of Park Hotels in 1990, India's hospitality industry was "in the dumps", she says. "We were faced with lots of empty hotels." Before the country's economic reforms of 1991 ushered in an era of growth, there was "little optimism" about the future. It was an inauspicious time to launch a sleek, designer hotel in India - a risky concept in a country accustomed to large, marble-clad hotels. But the well-travelled Ms Paul had seen the success of Ian Schrager's chic Royalton Hotel in New York and was convinced that the concept could take off in India. Today, Park Hotels is the country's leading boutique hotel brand, with properties in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, outer Mumbai and the resort city of Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh state. Twenty more are in the pipeline. Ms Paul was only 24 when she took over the fledgling Park Hotels, part of the Apeejay Surrendra Group, one of India's family-controlled conglomerates, in a role that was thrust on her by the suddent death of her father, Surrendra Paul. At the time, there were few young Indian women in similiar positions in business. But she was no novice. An economics graduate of Wellesley College near Boston, she had spent every summer working for her father, who "made it clear for my sister and me that he would love for us to work for him". When she was 22 her father appointed her marketing manager of Park Hotel. "After graduation I thought I was going to spend three months travelling. But he said: "This is the first day of your work,'" she recalls. "I had to make calls and make sales happen." She educated herself by meeting travel agents and clients, trying to understand where they were getting business and "asking lots of questions". Her siblings were also brought on board. Ms Paul's brother is now chairman of Apeejay Group while her sister oversees its retail and real estate units. While Ms Paul's is not a rags-to-riches story, hospitality was relatively new territory for the Apeejay Group. With holdings in tea, shipping and steel, it owned two hotels before it began building the brand in the late 1980s. Ms Paul set to work immediately, overhauling the Kolkata property with entrepreneurial zeal. She admits that initially "people needed alot of education" about The Park. Indian guests were used to cavernous, chandelier-lined lobbbies and asked why that those at The Park were so small. Ms Paul had to fight for her idea: "Yes, we're different, design-led. We're not for every type of customer." Attitudes began to change when she added Zen, a chic restaurant, at the hotel in 1992. Soon the Park Kolkata developed a reputation as a trendy venue for live bands. Ms Paul introduced more unconventional design into subsequent properties. On the site of an old 1930s film studio in Chennai, she opened a hotel with an Indian cinema theme. She also created the tongue-in-cheek "Leather Bar" at the hotel because of Chennai's legacy as a leather-making hub. "The designers said: 'You are mad.' [But] I wanted it to be dark and sexy with walls and floors of leather," she says. As a self-styled "great ripper of magazines", Ms Paul is fastidious about her interiors. She oversees every aspect of design "down to the ashtrays" and works with international designers such as Conran & Partners as well as contemporary Indian designers. "My job is to alert foreign designers to Indian elements," she says. Overhauling design was not Ms Paul's only strategy for bringing India's hotels up to date. She also modernised the company's business processes. One of the biggest moves was to install modern IT systems to manage reservations and "yield management software" to help determine room prices. In an unusual move for a hotel, The Park last year installed expensive SAP business software to manage its human resourcees. Shortage of skilled personnel is a pressing concern for the Indian hospitality industry. The Park's move was an attempt to address the problem by establishing its own management training programme and hospitality training centre in outer Mumbai. Predictions of growth in the sector are encouraging. Fuelled by underlying economic growth of more than 9 per cent, the World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts that spending on Indian tourism will grow by 7.9 per cent between 2007 and 2017. Meanwhile, there is adearth of capacity. HVS, a consultancy, estimates that there are about 110,000 hotel rooms in operation in India, of which fewer than 40,000 are branded rooms. By comparison, Las Vegas alone has about 150,000 rooms. As a result, The Park, like most luxury hotels in India, commands high rates. Room rates at The Park in Bangalore, for example, range from $375 to $700 a night. Ms Paul is scouting for properties overseas in locations such as Thailand, Sri Lanka and the Maldives, as well as Dubai and London, which lie on the well-trodden route of globe-trotting Indians. She sees the entire "collection" growing to between 25 and 30 hotels in the next five years. "There's a need for our hotels in other countries as customers change and become more individual," says Ms Paul. "They are looking for more hotels with character." As a local pioneer of boutique hotels, The Park "created and found a niche in India. Now the growth opportunity in India is tremendous," says Ms Paul. The company generated sales of about $55m in the last fiscal year. Credit Suisse's recent $55m investment for a 10-15 per cent stake in the company will help The Park expand as it aims to go public in a few years. For a family-run conglomerate, The Park's goal of going public is itself a "departure from the traditional way", Ms Paul admits. "There are things we can do on our own. But we also need to harness other resources." Two decades ago the idea of The Park becoming an Indian internal boutique hotel bran seemed a fantasy. But, Ms Paul says: "You have to have that courage in what you believe in and what you're trying to do." Source: Gnoel Review | Daily Extras! Eclat Me | Success Tip of the Day| 1DailyDiversion| Eclat Web - Must Visit Websites! A Beautiful Pic Every Day! Word of the Day| Quotation of the Day| Make Money! Immigration News! Desire- WOW Stuff! Stock Mkt Updates |
Posts
