The Quiet Turnaround

The Intercontinental Hotel Group was the earliest global entrant in India, but it could not become the market leader. In its second innings, prepare to see a more aggressive entity, as it aims to have 100 hotels within three years

- Vinita Bhatia

There is a popular saying that goes, work hard in silence and let your success make noise. It can be well applied to The Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) and its frontmen, Pascal Gauvin, COO, India, Middle East and Africa, and Vivek Bhalla, regional VP for South West Asia.

Since joining IHG in November last year, Bhalla has been working silently behind the scenes overseeing the operational performance of the 33 hotels that the company has in India. His agenda for now is to facilitate the opening of 100 hotels within three years, and he is busy working towards it in cohesion with Gauvin. He prefers to do it quietly rather than announce every breakthrough achieved along the way – not for him the boisterousness of Instagram or Twitter.

There is a reason for Bhalla’s reticence, other than his own natural disposition. Not many know that IHG was the first global hotel operator to enter India in the 1960s through a tie-up with the Oberoi Group in New Delhi. However, this first-mover advantage did not help the company become an industry leader and it ceded ground to other brands like Starwood Hotels & Resorts (now Marriott), Marriott, Hyatt Hotels, AccorHotels, etc, not to mention the indigenous ones like Taj Hotels Palaces Resorts Safaris. But that was in the past, and Bhalla would rather focuson the future than dissect what happened before.

In fact, Bhalla’s restraint is an antithesis to Gauvin’s French exuberance. It is precisely why the combination of Gauvin’s business acumen mixed with Bhalla’s operational judgment is likely to ensure that the stakeholders associated with IHG will profit from high-quality and a regular income stream.

ALL SET FOR THE FUTURE