SANJAY SETHI'S GRAND AMBITION

As MD & CEO of Chalet Hotels Ltd (CHL), Sanjay Sethi has put the group on an aggressive development path. In conversation with Deepali Nandwani, Sethi says his ambition is to ensure that Chalet is among the top two listed hotel groups in the country

Earlier last year, under the leadership of Sanjay Sethi, Chalet Hotels Ltd (CHL) launched one of the most successful IPOs. The money raised will be used to expand into new territories: hotels with an old partner, Marriott International, as well as a property with Hyatt are in the pipeline. The strength of CHL lies in hotel assets built in strategic locations in key metro cities, sustainable, efficient design that helps to increase ROIs, and development and incisive asset management

What has been your journey like in the industry?

I have been a hotelier all my life, almost 31 years. I was an accidental hotelier but if you ask me if I will do this all over again, yes I will. When I began, most of us who joined the industry were driven by the glamour associated with it. You realise very quickly that it is a very different story on the other side. I would like to mention a small anecdote: Out of the 127 who graduated from the hotel management course that year, I think only seven remained in the industry; 120 moved on to other industries. In those years, we had only four colleges in India; now about 400-odd students across India graduate every year. The industry was small then, with only four big chains. Now, the industry has grown to 20-odd chains.

Seemingly, even today, despite the growing number of graduates, hotels face a talent pool challenge…

A hotelier has to put in 12 to 15 hours in the early part of their career. The industry has also lost good people to other service industries such as retail, airlines, BPOs and banks. Unfortunately, in the hotel business, the pyramid is very wide at the bottom and a lot of the guest-facing engagement happens at the lower end of the pyramid. We need really good quality, trained people at the bottom and unfortunately, we aren’t getting enough of those.