Manav Thadani
Many independent hotels don’t have the means to operate efficiently enough in the current environment. This is a tremendous opportunity, since COVID-19 has made hotel operations even more challenging
The end of FY 2019-20 would have marked the second full year of Hotelivate in India, which was busy finalising HICSA last March. This event would have opened doors to another stupendous year of operations for the company.
“Due to the conference in early April, March is one of our strongest months every year. The lockdown, and subsequent shutdown, changed things. Instead of planning HICSA, we were refunding tickets to delegates when we had zero revenues from other businesses,” Manav Thadani, Founder Chairman, Hotelivate recalled.
When business trickled down in AMJ 2020, Hotelivate’s 36 associates across five offices channelised their energies entirely on cash flow management. “We picked up two very large strategic assignments in wellness for a new player and did some strategic work for a company that wanted to expand its Indian footprint,” Thadani revealed.
Another piece of business that helped was Hotelivate’s executive search practice, which saw a strong JFM 2020 business. “In most cases, these searches went through the entire process and candidates actually joined. Perhaps the fact that these executive search assignments were beyond hospitality helped us balance things at Hotelivate,” Thadani mused.
THE GOING GETS TOUGH
Hotelivate, which had 19 clients for its revenue management practice during the first lockdown, had to closed this division after almost all its clients shut operations for five months. It was on the verge of picking up a small portfolio in Indonesia, which also disappeared.
Meanwhile, asset management continued but at a slower pace than before. “The problem was that you need the hotels to be open, which wasn’t the case during the first wave,” Thadani explained. Hence, he learnt to operate with less. Following natural attrition in some divisions, he decided not to replace the talent or try to onboard people at lower costs.
Hotelivate decided to remain in the background in terms of external customers. It also avoided online conferences as it believes in physical events. “We attempted HOSI as a hybrid version, which was well accepted, and are now planning to organise HICSA by this month-end,” Thadani revealed.
He firmly believes that if one can survive the current crises successfully, there will be tremendous opportunities to grow. He has also realised that the best time to start a new business is during crises, as its foundations are invariably stronger. While preparing plans for a new service line, he recently partnered with Zenetic to launch Hotelivate Energy Asset Management. This provides IoT-based solutions to control energy costs for hotels and large buildings.
Thadani is also exploring third party management contracts. “Many independent hotels don’t have the means to operate efficiently enough in the current environment. This is a tremendous opportunity, especially since COVID-19 has made hotel operations even more challenging,” Thadani said, revealing that Hotelivate will shortly invest in a company with multiple hotels under its belt.
