The stars of the Indian hotel industry will be honoured and feted at the biggest industry event of the year – the inaugural Hotelier India Awards, on the 16th December.
Nothing marks out the Indian hospitality industry like its people. You are the engines of your trade, the wheels that spin dreams into real-time experiences.
With all the time and effort you put into making your guests happy, it is only fitting that Hotelier India, as the voice of India’s hospitality industry, reward those individuals who have excelled in their respective fields over the past two years.
Hotelier India therefore, is proud to announce its inaugural Hotelier India Awards, presented by Grohe, and in association with Hafele India, and Philips as ‘Leading by Innovation’ partner.
In the run up to the biggest event of the year – the Hotelier India Awards – we’ve highlighted some outstanding nominees hoping to make it to the winner’s rostrum on December 16th.
Ravitej Nath
executive chef
Trident Gurgaon
Chef Nath’s key innovation is to take the hotel’s standard of personalised service to a new high, by creating a customised room amenities programme for in-house guests. Being a hotel that hosts nearly 60% of global board meetings in India, he found it imperative to serve an exceptional and exclusive menu in the rooms.
His aim was to create something simple, yet luxurious and exclusive, with a very high recall value. Nath’s key delivery area is to put a dedicated information collection, delivery, and service mapping system in place.
Since every visit of a Fortune 500 CEO is known well in advance, the kitchen team uses the opportunity to do its research and arrive at an image that best describes the CEO’s company.
Rajah J Swamidoss
Training Manager
InterContinental The Lalit Goa Resort
Rajah J Swamidoss chose to go beyond token gestures done on World Environment Day, by instituting a year-long eco awareness and action programme – the Eco Club.
A voluntary staff organisation, the club has members from all hotel departments. The aim is to execute a minimum of four projects a year, or one every quarter. This ranges from the area cleaning and sapling planting to creating and managing organic farms.
Swamidoss’ Eco Club recently made the bold move with an education programme for the local village school children on environmental issues.
Vikas Sharma
The Chancery PavilioN Bengaluru
Vikas Sharma led the standalone five-star property with calculated initiatives to manage costs in a dynamic way, without compromising on service and product quality.
He used a multi-pronged approach by maximising revenue through online sales and social media channels, while instituting cost reduction initiatives at various levels of operations.
Another goal was also to retain the best talent and maintain low staff attrition levels. Employee leave was restructured across the board saving Rs3.89 lakh worth of leave liability within four months.
Rajesh Mani
Executive Housekeeper
Taj Krishna, Hyderabad
Rajesh Mani and his team have introduced innovations in the hotel that have resulted in high guest satisfaction scores. For continuity, Mani’s innovations were incorporated as standard operating procedures. Also, these innovations have been included in the best practices compilation annual exercise for the entire Taj group.
Nitin Sharma
Assssistant Director F&B
Crowne Plaza Today, Gurgaon
Nitin Sharma has played a key role in making beverage-combined-with meal programme an immensely profitable venture. His approach stands out as the general practice is to match wine and food. In addition, this was done in May, which is a traditional off-season. The novel approach coupled with a stylish presentation worked.
Subin V Subramanian
Manager – Information Systems
The Imperial, New Delhi
Subin V Subramanian has implemented HSRP and multiple power source with modular UPS which resulted in giving the hotel continuous output power. Linking IT practices to environmental concerns, he has discouraged the usual procedures of printing daily reports and salary slips, by making these online uploads. He has also ensured that the innovation continues well beyond the efforts of the founding team, by providing quarterly training to the IT staff of the hotel.
Taj Lands End
The Taj Lands End is located in the heart of the business district of Bandra. An integral part of the Taj Luxury Hotels and a member of the Leading Hotels of the World, the 18-storey hotel, with a dramatic three-storey lobby, has 493 luxuriously appointed guestrooms and suites that offer panoramic views of the Arabian Sea as well as the cityscape across the bay.
Vira International
Vira International is the Category Sponsor for Chef of the Year. India’s leading recruiter of hospitality staff, the company has been around for the last 25 years, and their consultants come from impressive hospitality backgrounds. In 2008-2009, Vira assisted in the pre-opening of prestigious projects such as the W Doha, Westin and Address Hotels & Resorts in Dubai,
Hilton Ras Al Khaimah, and Fairmont Bab al Bahar.
Asp ri Spirits
Aspri Spirits Private Limited, one of the leading distributors of premium wines, spirits and beer in the country, was established in 2004. The company is headquartered out of Mumbai and has branches in Delhi and Bangalore.
Aspri’s belief of building brands lies in developing markets together with its principals through team work, and identifying new opportunities and insights into changing market trends and preferences.
A tough call
Kudos to our jury members who went through each nomination painstakingly and sincerely, with no thought of the lateness of the hour – we eventually wound up at 11.30pm.
The jury was asked to deliberate on innovations that add substance to the concerned property, and, in the case of HR for instance, on singular best practices which are sustainable, scalable, and relevant to the needs of the industry.
It was a challenging task for them to identify one winner out of the many nominations that came in; the pictures bear testimony to how seriously they took their role as jurors.
Alutec
Alutec is the Category Sponsor for the Housekeeper of the Year. Alutec Systems India Pvt Ltd
(ASIPL) represents some leading European companies in the field of aluminium windows and doors.
Profiles are produced at Hindalco Ind Ltd. as per specifications laid by the company’s Italian principals. ASIPL has trained business associates in all major cities of India, who are well equipped with imported machineries.
Carrier
Carrier is the Sustainability and Award Partner for the prestigious Hotelier India Awards, as also Category Sponsor for the Procurement Manager of the Year.
The company started its operations in India in 1986. Carrier has one manufacturing facility in India, and a pan India dealer and service network. Carrier India has been awarded the First Prize in the ‘Consumer Goods Sector’ of the National Energy Conservation Awards for 2007.
OTIS
Otis is the Sustainability and Award Partner for the prestigious Hotelier India Awards, as also Category Sponsor for the Procurement Manager of the Year. Otis is India’s leading brand in the elevator industry.
It has the country’s best infrastructure with the largest service network, a world-class manufacturing facility near Bengaluru, and a 24×7 Otis Line Service and customer focused Contract Logistics Centre near Mumbai.
