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The devil is in the details
Visheshwar Raj Singh, better known as Vishi, takes the helm at the soon-to-be-operational Trident, Bandra-Kurla, Mumbai, after moving from a premium luxury property – Oberoi Amarvilas, Agra.
From handling a team of less than 200, to now managing a workforce of 400 people in a hotel that’s four times the size of Amarvilas, and is yet to open – Singh takes it all in his stride.
He has enjoyed every moment of opening a hotel, but what he is actually looking forward to now is the guest interaction.
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“Working in a location such as Agra poses its own set of unique challenges, which are offset to a large extent by the pleasure of working in a hotel that has repeatedly been ranked amongst the Top 10 hotels of the world.
The two years I spent at The Oberoi, Amarvilas, were different from what I am doing now in three broad aspects – scale, job content, and guests.
I have not had the chance to welcome any guests recently - which is what gets any good innkeeper out of bed each morning - but hopefully, that will change very soon. That said, the day-to-day content of what one does as an opening team member is completely different from working in an operational hotel, and I have truly relished being involved in the various stages of this hotel’s development”, he says.
Commenting on the current economic situation, Singh says: “I think that the worst is behind us now and Trident, Bandra-Kurla will be opening at a time when the colour is beginning to come back to our cheeks, so to speak.
I like to think of this pre-opening period as a sprinter’s warm-up time before a race, so that when the starter’s gun goes, he’s first off the blocks and can sustain that advantage till the finish line.
No matter what fresh business challenges tomorrow may throw at us, I think the time and effort we are spending on the basics right now will allow us to meet and overcome future hurdles with relative ease,” he adds.
There is always something that keeps the competition hotted up. Earlier, it was the price war, which raged on even though it is difficult to put a price on service.
What, according to him, are the new battle lines for hoteliers? Says Singh: “Well, the price point of a product can certainly impact its sale. Increasingly, corporate travellers and even middle management executives are becoming savvier about defining ‘good service’ and are orienting their loyalty to a hotel or a hospitality chain based on it.
This factor is the real game changer that we hope to leverage in taking the ‘battle for beds’ to our competitors’ doorsteps.
“Also, I strongly feel guest comments are like our true report card, and I value them over any other form of performance benchmarking for a hotel. It may be a cliché but it is absolutely true that ultimately, guests sign our paycheque.
In my vocabulary, guests are not just the ones that walk through our main door, but also the people that come through our service entrance – the hotel team members. I use a number of different forums and media to communicate with them as well, and their opinions do make a difference at work.”
Singh is said to be a down-toearth person, and a perfectionist when it comes to the details. He says he has an uncompromising approach towards quality, and is proud of it. Does this mean he can sometimes be inflexible in his thinking/approach?
“I certainly am demanding, but not to the point of being inflexible or rigid in my approach. Both at work and otherwise, nothing bothers me more than carelessness or a laid-back attitude. As the saying goes, ‘the devil is in the details’; it is so important to take care of these details, because my experience has led me to believe that if you can get the small things right, usually the big things tend to take care of themselves. “If by ‘down-to-earth’ you mean unpretentious then yes, I would agree.
My management style has been greatly influenced by my first general manager, Vikram Oberoi; he is so approachable and unassuming that, when talking to him, I never felt awed by the fact that I was interacting with the grandson of our founder, Rai Bahadur MS Oberoi,” he says.
Incidentally, Singh is a homegrown Oberoi product, who has never been tempted to play musical chairs in his career, having joined the Group as a management trainee in 1995.
He says it is the orientation towards quality in the company, that continues to inspire him. This passionate, amateur photographer is also a huge fan of the movies; he calls himself an “amateur connoisseur” of good cinema. In his words: “I think the term ‘unwind’ for me, will definitely be accompanied by cola and popcorn”.
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COMMENT
its really bng a pleasure to work under Mr.kobrin.