Hospitality consulting firm HVS hosted its second Hotel Operations Summit – India (HOSI) 2010, on December 15 and 16. The annual one-and-half-day conference, conducted by HVS India, aimed to empower hospitality professionals through sharing of international best practices and quality standards – all with a dedicated focus on the operations of hotels.
The event, which took place at The Leela Kempinski, Gurgaon enabled a forum of industry leaders, managers, corporate-heads and other professionals to share innovative successful solutions.
Among those who shared pointers accumulated from years of experience were industry stalwarts like ITC luxury collection and WelcomHotels COO, Dipak Haksar; Carlson Hotels executive vice president South Asia KB Kachru; Trident Hotels president Ratan Keswani and Ambience Group Chairman Raj Singh Gehlot.
HOSI also saw expertise shared by hospitality experts such as Preferred Hotel Group director of revenue account management Brij Bhushan Chachra; Royal Orchid Hotels chairman and managing director Chander Baljee; Accor India regional director of sales and marketing Daniel Tannenbaum and Accor Hotels senior VP of India operations Jean-Micheal Casse; Duet group CEO Dilip Puri; Oberoi Hotels & Resorts Senior VP Kapil Chopra; CAPA India CEO South Asia Kapil Kaul and Marriott area vice president for India, Malaysia, Maldives and Pakistan Rajeev Menon; InterContinental Hotels Group associate VP of development Rajiv Sharma and Nirulas managing director and CEO Samir Kuckreja.
Panel discussions covered several of the hospitality landscape’s burning issues such as retention of staff, what makes owners happy, whether revenue management or key account management should invite a greater focus and a workshop on technology innovation led by Professor Ian Miller, from the IT department at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne.
A memorable component of the always interesting ‘Hot Seat’ session was a bed-making competition for the general managers in the hot seats to ‘test’ their hands-on involvement in hotel operations. Cheers emerged from the attendees as the five general managers scurried around making beds hospitality-style. Courtyard by Marriott Gurgaon general manager Matthew Cooper won this round.
