Back with a bang

At the end of every HICSA, Hotelivate’s team takes feedback from attending delegates. Consistent feedback was that most conferences tend to bring back the same speakers as the industry is small and all the leaders want to be heard.

Since the last edition of HICSA was held this past September, Manav Thadani, Founder and Chairman of Hotelivate, explains why the team chose to go all out and bring in new speakers. He also reveals what HICSA 2022 has in store for the industry.

HICSA is back in Mumbai, and you have taken the bold step of being a completely in-person event. Are you a little apprehensive?

Well, we firmly believe it was the right thing to do. Even when we cancelled in 2020 and postponed it to September in 2021, we were of the opinion that an event as important as HICSA should be in-person. Things are also getting back to normal gradually; offices are getting back to physical attendance, flights are running fully again. I see hope!

Also, we are doing everything to ensure that it’s safe for our delegates. The venue can typically accommodate 900 people, and we have capped our numbers at 400.

The meeting, incentive, conference and exhibition (MICE) segment has been completely dormant for the past two years. Do you believe 2022 it will all come back?

MICE as a segment was not completely dormant, at least in India. See, this segment is divided into corporate and social events. So while business conferences such as HICSA were not able to happen, social events like weddings were suddenly the saviours for countless hotels across India.

People felt safer in hotels instead of banquet halls as bubbles could have been created. Smaller, more curated weddings happened.

So the answer is – yes! Now with things opening up, we believe that 2022 in India will be a stellar year for this business segment. Globally, however, this timeline can be different. But we have to keep in mind that weddings as a business segment are big, mainly in Asian countries and not so much in the west.

You’ve mentioned that this year there are many first-time speakers. What does it mean for the hospitality sector?

We proactively reached out to the leaders and asked them if they would sit out and allow others in their teams to participate. Almost all of them supported this approach. We also have had many international chains see leadership level changes occur regionally, and all these leaders are coming to India for the first time.

From what we recall at Hotelier India, you seem to have a new theme; you have never done a theme before at HICSA – Harder. Better. Faster. Stronger.

New ideas, new thoughts, fresh perspectives – that is what we need at this moment. Therefore, this edition of HICSA will be centred on resilience. With two of the most challenging years in recent times behind us, HICSA aims at igniting sparks of hope for the hospitality industry as it begins its journey on the road to recovery.

The theme of this year’s conference is about that journey where the collective focus is on working at it harder, trying to make it better, do it faster, making us all stronger – Harder, Better, Faster and Stronger. The two-day hospitality-focused conference will be aimed at providing a much-needed boost to one of the worst-affected industries in the world, with some of its most prominent thought-leaders and trend-setters uniting under one roof.

With International Women’s Day just around the corner, what do you feel about women leaders in the sector?

We needed to stand out, and therefore as organisers, we made an effort to invite more women speakers. The fact that 20% of our speakers are women makes me proud that we went down this route. I wish others in the hospitality industry would also make this effort.

Almost all companies wanted to talk of gender neutrality, but very few followed through. In fact, at Hotelivate, 45% of all our employees are women, and we are proud of that. I am of the firm opinion that we must encourage more women leaders across the spectrum.

This question is not particularly related to HICSA, but the hospitality sector. Do you think ‘Revenge Tourism’ is for real?

I believe revenge tourism was a nicely coined phrase that caught the media’s attention and has been used across the globe. 2022 will see some ‘revenge tourism’, and then things will settle down to more normalcy. However, I believe that trends driving tourism to leisure destinations are here to stay.

Homestays particularly will grow, but there will be some clean up in this segment. With overall demand becoming more rational, this too will become survival of the fittest. I believe that homestays that offer some reasonable level of quality of service will continue to do well.

Recently, I was in Alibagh and saw some branded homestays. I felt disappointed at the poor overall quality of these units and was astonished at how much people were willing to pay for this poor quality. I believe there will be a much-required shake-up in this segment.

Looking back now, if you had known that COVID-19 would affect the sector like this and if there was one thing that you could change – what would that be?

Well, I would have done things, though I am unsure if I could individually have made any difference. I would have wished for a more responsive and sensitive government towards tourism.

Most of us in the industry feel let down by central and state governments. States because tourism is a state subject and even the statutory requirements and fees were not waived off while the business was forcefully shut. Secondly – I would have invested more in the leisure segment.

Two years in a worldwide pandemic and Hotelivate, and you have survived. What has been the most important takeaway for you?

For me personally, it’s all about people. We would not have survived if it had not been for the team support we got and the resilience of these teams at Hotelivate. We also had our unfortunate bad moments. 

We were growing our revenue management practice, and when the pandemic struck, this was one business that had to be shut down. We absorbed some of these associates and helped place another 2-3 in other jobs.

However, all of this was done not overnight but over 6-8 months as there were only a few openings in the market. I think we, as an industry, became more cost-efficient. 

On the people front, I think today’s workforce needs to be multi-skilled, nimble and willing to be entrepreneurial. We continuously work towards finding such people to grow this team and will continue hiring in the coming weeks and months.