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THE NEW FACE OF INDIAN HOSPITALITY A second generation hotelier with a sharp business acumen and a heart of gold. Sandeep Gupta, Managing Director, Aria & Consultancy and Executive Director, Asian Hotels (West) believes in striving for excellence in life and giving back to society.

TEXT: NIDHI JOSHI

Cover Story

n a freewheeling chat, Gupta who owns JW Marriott New Aerocity and Regency speaks to us about being a catalyst in reshaping the hospitality scene of India and his future plans. I Please take us through your professional journey with your brands: Aria Hotels and Asian Hotels West - from inception of the brand to where it stands today. I started in 1998 to build the Hyatt Regency Mumbai and Hyatt Regency Kolkata. While I was working in Asian Hotels (in our family company), I expanded the brand of Hyatt in Mumbai and Kolkata with Hyatt Regency and it commenced operations in 2002-2003, Hyatt Regency kolkata commenced operations at the same time. Hyatt Regency is still operating in Mumbai at a good occupancy – high seventies, good ADR in spite of the weakness in economy - it’s about seven and a half thousand depending on world. has done a good job with the Vilas the CP, then I was pursuing to buy land in Aerocity Complex properties. We do very well with a city property, with the JW which we acquired in 2008, finally commenced construction in Marriott brand, St. Regis in Mumbai is also a luxury property, The 2010 and opened in 2013 with the JW Marriott brand. We wanted Four Seasons and there are other brands as well. So, I think it’s to get into the luxury space and with the JW Marriott brand we quite comparable, but we are obviously undersupplied in the thought we could make an entry into the city. I think in the last 6 luxury segment and I feel there will be more developers in the years we’ve done well to position ourselves as a luxury brand and space in the luxury segment because city hotels are we are ahead of our competitive set; it’s averaging an ADR of a expensive to finance for a luxury brand. good 9500 to 10,000 with 80% plus occupancy. So it’s become the market leader in the luxury segment. This is a short synopsis, but How do you balance your professional and personal life I’ve run a lot of other companies in the interim as well. considering that you have such a busy schedule? I pretty much work all the time. The only time I don’t work is What do you think of Indian hospitality industry, and where when I travel and I take short breaks for a week or so in about does India stand in comparison with the luxury hospitality every six weeks. I love to travel, reenergize and observe what’s market of the world? happening around the world in terms of design, restaurants and In terms of brands and luxury hotels across the country, there are hotels. Though it is personal time, but there’s always work at the lots of them. They’re at par with the luxury hotels around the back of my mind.

42 Millionaireasia India MARCH – APRIL 2020 “Strive for excellence and don’t stop. Keep learning as you’ve never really reached the top”

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“We are looking at Mumbai and Goa as our next market for a boutique with around 100-150 rooms each”

Any restaurant that you can recall during your travels that has really impressed you? Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck was absolutely fantastic. It’s more like a journey and not just a dining experience. It’s a sensory experience for four and a half hours and is absolutely phenomenal. There are various restaurants around the world that I’ve eaten at and this was one of my favourite experiences.

And what keeps you going? What motivates you to be a go- getter? I think it’s just to get better, and still better because I never accept the level that I am at. With the team, I’m always driving them to do better even though we are market leaders in the industry and Marriott’s a good chain to work with. So, what drives me is to get to the next level. I mean, we work with Marriott and Hyatt and there are more things that we can do, create more spaces. Then there are new ideas that I try to share with them and they are good partners to work with. So it’s a drive to get better and get What is your vision as a hotelier? excellent hospitality within this country. That drives me most of My vision is to give the best experience to whoever comes in and the time. stays in a hotel. It should be a wholesome experience. It should be a sensory experience, and should not just be a quick stay. You are a successful hotelier. What would you say is your That’s what a team delivers. We give the best experience to our mantra for success? guests. Strive for excellence and don’t stop. Keep learning as you’ve never really reached the top. There’s always something more to learn. As a gold member of YPO, how do you view leadership and You need to keep thinking so that things keep changing and keep what qualities should a leader have? doing better. You work with each team member, you have to observe how you

44 Millionaireasia India MARCH – APRIL 2020 make your team work with each other. I personally take interest Does that mean more competition for you? in everyone’s growth and I want everyone to work towards a It’s been an opportunity and quite a big one at that. You have a higher goal for themselves. I like to watch and see where I can bigger outreach, you reach more customers, spending less time give that opportunity to an individual within the team and make on a mailer and paperwork. sure that the team grows as a whole and achieves the financial Your passion besides work, what keeps you in love with life? objectives. To explore. Obviously, to travel to new countries. New experiences with their food, their restaurants, other times in the Now with the digitization of almost everything around us, how gym, with family and friends. What I love to see is new do you think it has impacted the hospitality industry? architecture and new art. Anything that I can incorporate into my In a good way, I think a lot of people can now check online life and into our hotels. So that keeps me going, makes life whatever is available in terms of every hotel. It’s a lot quicker. interesting. Not just operating the hotel, but also looking around Customers can do it on their own and don’t have to rely on travel the world and bringing back that as part of your life. companies. They can just go on a website and book direct tickets which is great. And the hotels as well, they would prefer to have Which is your favourite travel destination and whom do you that too which is a quicker response or a quicker booking, and like to travel with? Are you a solo traveler or you like to travel we’ve adapted to that. So we started our mobile check-ins, just in groups of friends? book your room and you get a mobile key which is a good My favourite destination is Mykonos which I go to every year. percentage of all our check-ins now. And then at some point, I I’ve been going there every year in the summer. I also love Bali think guests will be able to choose the type of room, the size, Island, it’s beautiful and it just calms you down. I have a favourite layout, the experience they want. So everything’s changing fast. companion to travel with, she lives in London so we take one trip You have to move with that and whatever we do at our hotels we together yearly. We share the same passions so we make sure that have to make sure that digitization is what we adapt to quickly. at least once a year we travel together.

MARCH – APRIL 2020 Millionaireasia India 45 Whom do you look up to as your role model and what are the attributes you think that account to be a successful hotelier and an entrepreneur? My father started this business in the 1980s so obviously I learned a lot from him. And I think all my basic confidence and the will to make good hotels, to get them into benchmark; I think a lot of it came from him because he had made the most successful hotel in Delhi – the Hyatt Regency. I learned a lot from watching him and how he operated with the team, so my biggest learning curve is from my father. But to be a good entrepreneur, you have to have a few mentors in life. I have three or four whom I depend on to really teach me about everything – be it business or life, all senior people from whom one can learn from. It is the best thing for an entrepreneur to have.

What are the challenges you think the hospitality industry is facing today? I think there are a lot of new regulations coming in on how to have clean energy, sustainability, how to make sure we start relying on those technologies, become more efficient and cleaner. So obviously that’s something that we are working on as well. That’s a challenge now in the hospitality industry – challenges how to lessen waste and how to become greener. It’s a worldwide movement to reduce waste. What we would like to do is generate less waste, especially food waste. Aerocity was a good example. So we need more joint initiatives like a PPT model and the fourth is plastic bottles. We’re very passionate about removing excess connectivity – both inter and intra cities. So that remains a plastic from the hotel. And that can be a big challenge, a global challenge – infrastructure and connectivity. I’m not talking about challenge. We want to be a part of the movement and solve it as airports, they’re well connected now, but road and rail connectivity. much as we can. And so we set up our own water bottling plant and made sure that the water that was as good and comparable You recently won an award for best initiative in sustainable to any mineral water, but not in plastic. We’re trying to go development and social responsibility. Tell us something more greener, we want to use solar energy which will use less fuel. We about that. have space constraints, so we can’t do that but at the same time The first idea which we wanted to implement was a substitute for we want to make sure that we have as less a carbon footprint as

46 Millionaireasia India MARCH – APRIL 2020 QUICK BYTES

Your favourite gadget My iPhone 11- which is like my office in my hand so I don’t need to go to the office daily

How do you start your day? I start work at seven and then work through the day and then take a break mid- afternoon

Three tips for a budding hotelier? You have to be passionate about the business, you have to do something new in design and concepts, and you have to have an eye for detail and while operating the hotel with an eye for servicing as well as costs

Your success mantra... Strive for excellence, constantly! There’s no time off

Your favourite book... Midnights’ Children by Salman Rushdie

One quote that inspires you... Be yourself, everyone else is already taken

Your fitness regime... Gym five times a week at least, some yoga and meditation too

Your favourite food... Japanese

One guilty pleasure... Red wine of a good vintage

You like to binge watch.. Anything on HBO

Favourite hotel besides yours Udaivilas by Oberoi

One chef whom you would like to work Heston Blumethal

possible. That’s a challenge that we need to work on slowly, but looking at north Goa for some time. we’ve got to follow up. It’s a slower process than I would like. You are a board member of Khushii, an organization devoted What is your take on the MICE and wedding market? towards the education of underprivileged children. Tell us Yes, that’s a huge chunk for us. Wedding market was very something more about this association. seriously looked upon by Marriott about three years back when Khushii is a board which has been operating for a very long they launched shaadibymarriott.com and that has just become the time. And I’m also one of the patrons and sponsors for platform for how to book weddings. They made it more like an some events that Khushii does. We being in hospitality, we organized segment rather than just a one-off kind of a marketing sponsor for Khushii whenever we can for the events that tactic. The MICE segment is a huge part of the business and then they do. They do a lot of groundwork for education for we have the FIT (Frequent Independent Traveler) and the tourists young kids. Another side I explored was to launch a as well. We look at all four segments equally. foundation for rebuilding childhood which is the Indian Chapter of Global Fund for Children. I launched the Indian Are you looking at any particular city for expansion plans? Chapter which was a year and half back and that went on Yes, Mumbai and Goa. We’re still looking at Mumbai and just for some time, about six to eight months. But we could not studying its market where we can have our next hotel. Maybe a grow that unfortunately. And then of course there are the small boutique hotel with around 200 rooms. We’ve also been other charities which we are part of.

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