Prestige Group
We have to have faith in the Almighty and be forever thankful for what we have. The way forward is to stand strong together and work towards strengthening our place back in the same strata, or even better, evolve from where we started before the pandemic hit humanity. For the next few months, contactless check-in and check-out, smart room allocation to control costs and practising social distancing guidelines, while ensuring adequate revenues despite reduced capacities at restaurants, are high impact areas that a hotel must tackle. The hospitality industry is often perceived to be inflexible to exploring new revenue channels. However, the current crisis has enforced an evaluation, leading some of the most premier hospitality brands to initiate new practices. I strongly believe that the revolution of pursuing unexplored revenue channels coupled with adapted processes will continue.
The Prestige Group, through the Prestige Foundation, has provided 1.3 million meals and provisions to daily wage workers, underprivileged children and the needy across the cities of Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi and Mysuru. For a month, the hotels also provided to over 20,000 families as well as to hospitals and orphanages and set up a 24-hour national helpline to aid the needy.
While Sheraton Grand Bengaluru Whitefield Hotel & Convention Center, most associates worked from home in keeping the highest level of safety protocols, a few associates who helped in community outreach were accommodated at the group hotels to ensure their safety. They came together to prepare meals which were distributed amongst fellow citizens stuck during the lockdown or dependent on daily wages.
Conrad Bengaluru collaborated with Skill India to develop SOPs and guidelines for online certification course of Food Safety Standards and Sanitisation for restaurants and hotels in keeping with FSSAI guidelines. At Conrad Bengaluru there is a dedicated Hygiene Manager who ensures compliance, as the impact of mishandling procured items can be immense.
For employees, the hotel recorded training sessions that were made available online for reference of all team members. Conrad Bengaluru has conducted over 15 online sessions, an hour each, every day for the past three months and close to 60 manhours have been put in, with an average of 150 attendees every day.
These initiatives have contributed towards a 15% reduction in the attrition rate of employees vis-a-vis the previous year. Other training sessions such as Lead at Hilton for chasing personal development and career goals and LinkedIn Learnings workshops, conducted during the lockdown, helped the team members achieve their career goals, internal transfers and promotions.
Frontline Heroes
Chef Sai Kumar, Conrad Bengaluru
Chef Sai Kumar volunteered at the Karnataka Civil Defence, a social organization by the Government of Karnataka. He also helped the inter-state team members with emergency passes issued by the government and was involved in distributing food to the needy, especially kids and aged people.
Vigneshraj a.k.a Vignesh, Conrad Bengaluru
Vignesh, who lived at the hotel during the lockdown, would start his day with daily tasks and then kept his colleagues engaged with a friendly game of cricket or badminton and long chat sessions. Though his father suffered a heart attack and was in hospital in Coimbatore and his 55-year old mother was all alone, he chose to stay on at the hotel, stating, “My colleagues are living with their families. How can I ask one of them to leave their children and wife so I can go home?”
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