Hotelier India Magazine - May 2021

In this issue

Every time, he faced a challenge, Chander Baljee, CMD of Royal Orchid Hotels hunkered down to rework his strategies and ploughed his way through the crisis. Not once did he consider giving up though. Not when he took a plunge into the hospitality business and lost the first hotel he bid for; not when he took a master franchise for a global brand and was forced to continue the 10-year contract despite losing money, not when a dream hotel project in Hyderabad had to be sold to cut debts, nor when the pandemic slammed the brakes on the business. Read about Baljee’s remarkable journey in Hotelier India’s Cover Story, where he outlines how he built a chain of 60 hotels within two decades, overcoming all odds, and how he is set to touch the 100-hotel milestone by 2022. As the pandemic continues to reshape business, Patrick Mendes, Group CCO (Sales, Marketing, Distribution and Loyalty) at Accor, explains why hybrid meetings are here to stay, long after we bid COVID-19 goodbye. As this trend shapes up to impact a large part of meetings, hotel brands will continue to rely on a dynamic domestic market by optimising the use of available spaces and diversifying revenue for the longer term. F&B is yet another domain that was significantly impacted since last year. Many restaurants shifted towards cloud kitchens during the pandemic, using their existing kitchens for takeaway and delivery orders. This includes fine-dining and specialty outlets in hotels. It looks like cloud kitchens will continue to hold center stage in the food business, as customer footfalls remain dismal, but online deliveries see robust growth. This issue has several other interesting articles, including dealing with cyber security challenges, evolved hotel design principles, offering reskilling opportunities to entrenched staffers and the nuances of content marketing.