President, Hotel Association of India, and chairman, Radisson Hotels India and South Asia, K B Kachru, spoke at a recent HAI convention in the capital. Presented here are excerpts from his address.
The general feeling is hospitality leaders, they are only looking at the service and the bottom line, but the fact remains, friends, you are shaping the future of our industry. The last quarter century, I need not emphasize, we all know what happened from 9/11 to SARS to global financial crisis, COVID, geopolitical conflicts, including, if I may say, the Trump era and linked with it, turbulence we are going through. But one thing, I’m sure you will all agree, was our resilience and I think we need to applaud ourselves for being resilient to face what all we have faced in the last quarter century. The good news is that we bounced back.
Although sometimes, I don’t want to offend anybody, but sometimes we have been blamed for high tariffs. Our friends tell us, hotels are becoming, becoming more and more expensive, but believe us, Sir, when we were in the dumps, we learned to survive, be resilient. Having said that, we want India to thrive. The best thing was we learned to work together. And we actually want to focus on priorities and measurable outcomes. We are just not there to plead for us. The spirit behind this conclave is re-engineering hospitality and re-engineering ourselves.
Friends, if we are serious about contributing to India’s ambition of achieving our vision of 2030 and 2047, and about building tourism into a much larger engine of economic growth and employment, we cannot continue doing business the way we have always done it. There has to be a change. We have to move faster. We have to think differently. The future depends on what you all can do today. We need blessings, and that’s why I made it a point to tell our honourable minister that we do want to hold ourselves accountable for all the outcomes.
For long, hospitality and tourism were seen as lifestyle or elite businesses. Thanks to the government and you all, is the entire leadership here, the perception is changing, and I’m sure you’ll agree rightly so. Today, we’re pushing for tourism to be recognized as a serious economic activity that creates employment, attracts investment, generates foreign exchange, and develops entrepreneurs and ultimately, a combination of all this will help us meaningfully contribute to our GDP.
Sir, we’re only requesting to help us create an enabling environment to make it happen. All we are asking we should work towards tweaking some of the policies and have a system of monitoring the execution. The problem with us is we have policies, the intent is very good, but the monitoring is a problem, and I would appeal that please involve the industry in monitoring. Our state governments need to deliver what they promise. I don’t think it’s a big ask. We’re only requesting them, whatever you promise to us, please do it timely, have an action plan, and make it transparent. Prime Minister, our Prime Minister has rightly identified tourism as one of the important pillars of the economy. In fact, at one time we were one of the five top pillars of economy, which was announced. We want to promise you from our side, we will do our best to make it more solider.
Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come to translate the recognition into an actionable and measurable policy. We’re happy that Ministry of Tourism and industry is working together and both entities have decided that we’ll measure the deliverables. We must focus on deliverables and make them visible to the world and this brings me perhaps to the biggest opportunity. Growth that provides employment by engaging better with our youth and help position India better, which will make all of us proud. We have to manage our destinations better. I don’t want to go deep into it, but I think one of the pain points we have is that there has to be coordination, state level, destination level, so that people who visit those places have a great experience. What concerned me most was, on one side, we are focusing on employment, we are focusing on GDP. The recently released NITI Aayog report, I don’t know how many of you have had a chance, it was released only 6, 7 days back. Reports, this report was on skilling and that report really makes a sobering reading. It maps a huge population outside the labor force and highlights the challenge of young people who are neither in education, nor do they have jobs, and nor are they training. I was amazed to find out that 80 crore people in India are doing nothing. We must be grateful to our government that they have taken skill council to newer heights. Last alone about 3 lakh people, if I am right, were trained. But this is not enough. This cannot be done by government alone. The onus is equally on all of us and the industry. I would recommend, sir, that government also needs to push industry equally. If we are pushing government that we want 1, 2, 3, 4, I think on behalf of the industry, if I am permitted to say by my executive committee, we are ready to take the challenge.
Tourism and hospitality can be one of the biggest platforms for converting our demographic dividend into a huge economic dividend and for that, we need to work collectively. Although individually and collectively, we are focusing, but we need to focus more. Training alone is not enough. Our objective must be, we have to make people job-ready, and I am really happy to see some of our EC members who have really gone ahead and set up schools, programs, which are helping our youth and making them job-ready. Skill council is doing a great job. Sir, we need to combine our efforts and have our policies right. This is not a laundry list, but what I am asking is if we want investments to flow quicker. Access to capital, to build infrastructure and have last-mile connectivity is a key factor. I strongly believe that capital will flow if we collectively address the key issues.
Market India to the world to not only look for quick wins, but set the path for future. Push to great world events, we must get world events to India. I think unless we focus on sports, world tourism, I think things will not happen. We have to actually lead from the front. Look at the current pace at which hotel brands are now expanding across India. The appetite is clearly there. We all are aware, India has just closed road 225,000 rooms, less than the state of New York. See the possibilities, there’s possibility of creating infrastructure, this possibility of creating jobs, if we have to look at 2030 and 2047, we have to address all these points. So, the question is whether investors have opportunities elsewhere. My feeling is they do. Why should an investor choose India? I think we need to ask ourselves, it’s not only to the government and if the answer is immediately not compelling, we need to understand what is holding us back. We need to acknowledge it, we need to fix it, and then move on. That’s where HAI will continue to play its role, friends. We have advocated relentlessly for the industry status and have had some important successes, again, thanks to our honorable Minister, his entire team. But lots more needs to be done. We acknowledge in a positive way that road to success is always under construction. So, we need to go on making more roads. Yet even after making lots of roads, will always be under construction.
Sir, we are banking on you and your team to push our agenda in improving the investment and building infrastructure, last-mile connectivity in line with the growth we are seeking for 2030 and 2047 objective. These are not industry demands. These are national economic priorities. We all at HAI believe this should be a national priority, national priority, if tourism, hospitality becomes a national priority, we are there.
Let us re-engineer our policies, let’s re-engineer our approach to investment and execution, let’s re-engineer the way we develop our talent, and let’s re-engineer hospitality so that our industry becomes an even stronger engine of employment, entrepreneurship, investment, and inclusive growth. The opportunity, friends, is enormous. The time is to act now. This is despite realizing the road to success is always under construction.
