Shamsher Singh Mann, Consulting & Valuation, New Delhi Office
My journey as a hotelier began early as a 16 year old student with the Institute of Hotel Management, Bangalore. After graduation, I got selected as a Management Trainee at ITC's Management Institute (WMI) and then proceed as part of the pre opening team for the ITC Grand Maratha Luxury Collection hotel in Mumbai. This was a wonderful experience and taught me a lot about hotel operations. However, after five years of extensive hotel F&B operations, I yearned to go out into the world and get a first hand look at other industries and businesses. I decided to pursue my MBA at the Nanyang Business School in Singapore. This education taught me a lot about the ‘other' side of the world which I craved for and how it operated but more importantly it taught me the value of my experience as a hotelier. For me it was the realization of how important it is to specialize in one's field and understand it completely. While one may disagree with my favoured approach, it works for me.
Having found direction in what I wanted to pursue as a career, I decided on a twin pronged approach to comprehend the entire value chain:
- Understand the financial side of evaluating hotels as a business.
- Get exposure to under construction projects and expansion of the business.
While my aim was quite novel, I was not all that sure of how I could achieve it. Then I found HVS.
HVS has been a perfect platform for understanding and getting exposed to the hotels business. Being a small firm with the largest share of the Indian hospitality consulting market, we get to:
- Travel extensively across the country and the Indian sub continent
- Visit and interview hotels and hoteliers across the different segments of hotels, understanding how spas, F&B, banqueting and most importantly rooms operate in the different markets
- Get exposure to development of industry, infrastructure, and demographics of a yet little understood country
- Meet the investors, owners, hotel companies, bankers, architects and a range of people involved in building these hotels
- Understand the financial structuring of management contracts, investor searches, auctions and bids etc.
- Research and author articles on various facets of the hospitality industry
Overall this extremely enriching experience provides a fantastic overview of our industry at very close quarters, an experience which I am now very sure that no other job can match in breadth and depth.
Here's a rundown of a "typical" week:
Monday
- Catch up on emails
- Office meeting: discuss the leads and opportunities of the week
- Follow up on previous leads and opportunities
- Feed in data from last week's field visit and begin analysis
- Plan out travel plans for latter half of the week
- Update intranet
- Read articles on economy/hotels/finance/politics
Tuesday
- Book tickets, hotel reservations and taxi for field visit
- Plan itinerary and arrange meetings with hotel executives and real estate companies
- Collate data for field visit include historical performance of the market and constituent hotels. Use other sources as and when necessary
- Pack for trip - ensuring to bring business cards, digital camera, and contact numbers and addresses, HVS publications and other marketing material
- Continue working on pending assignments including analyses of projects and writing of reports
Wednesday & Thursday
- Drive through the subject property's neighborhood, noting surrounding land uses
- Take exterior and interior pictures and note anything particularly important to mention in write-up of the physical asset
- Visit city offices for information on zoning and new hotel supply in the market
- See commercial developments (office and retail) around the area to gauge the economic development
- Visit any tourist locations around the area
- Visit all hotels in the competitive market and conduct interviews with the required set
- Get development/zoning plans of the city/area
- Visit real estate agents in the area for a first hand feel of the market, development norms
- Double check that I've obtained all necessary information for the study
- Arrive home Thursday late evening and send out thank you mails to those who have helped out in the interviews etc.
Friday
- Organize my fieldwork notes, answer emails, return calls
- Review market performance and report on details from the trip
- Enter any additional financial information obtained from my work in the field
- Upload information from the city into the common research drive for all to see. This would cover comments on hotels and restaurants, Photographs of proposed and existing supply and any other data collated
- Begin study with available information
- Work with our editors and production staff to finalize the appraisal report for delivery to the client
Working in HVS is very different from anything else I have ever come across. Our organization is goal driven. We strive hard to improve on our personal performance and it does not matter to anyone where we work from or what time we enter and leave our workspace. The organization is flat and growth is proportional to our personal efforts. Entrepreneurial zeal is encouraged and the organization backs good business ideas. The work atmosphere is very positive and the young team here often meets up partying and basically having fun. It is a joy to be part of this organization, a joy to come to work every day.
