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Conrad Egbert.

Hello! And welcome to this month’s edition of the magazine. This issue is quite a special one for us, with many late nights having been spent up here in the Hotelier India towers, to put a cracking issue together.

With the FHRAI convention coming up later this month in Agra where we’re the official media partner, Team Hotelier has rounded up seven FHRAI ex-presidents along with the current president Rajindera Kumar to ask them about the trials and tribulations of heading up the largest hotel association in the country.

One can only imagine how difficult it was to get hold of all these presidents, with the earliest one dating back to 1997. It even got a little distressing for deputy editor Simona Terron at one point, when she learnt, while on the phone, that one particular president had passed-on from this world. Journalists’ lives aren’t always fun, I’m afraid. May he rest in peace.

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But combined, all eight interviews offer a different perspective on the workings of the FHRAI. All the presidents are so different in their ways, yet so similar. The current president Rajindera Kumar even answered a few of my pertinent questions on current issues within the hotel industry in an exclusive interview with Hotelier India.

Kumar also made it into our cover story, ‘what’s in the stars,’ by virtue of being one of the oldest classifying members of the Indian star-rating committee.

The cover story takes a deep look into the inner workings of the hotel star-rating system in the country, what the industry thinks about it, why hotels are better-off getting themselves rated and what needs to be changed to keep up with the times.

We also briefly compare the Indian system to other international systems in order to get a more wholesome and complete understanding of the various systems we have around us. Apart from these, we’ve also put together some cracking tips, for hoteliers on what to watch out for when being visited by committee investigators during the classification or reclassification process - straight from the horse’s mouth!

And then, next month is Hotelier India’s anniversary issue. Even though it feels much older, it will only be the second anniversary of the publication. We’ve come a long way in very little time. Well done Team Hotelier! Look out for the issue next month! It’s got some great stories in there for you.

We’re also the official media partners for the Fire & Safety Association of India conference on Hospitality Security in New Delhi this month. So, if you can’t get through to our castle phones, try our mobiles.

We will have our hands quite full, reporting live from both events. For those of you who wanted to be at either of these events, but couldn’t make it for whatever reasons, we’ve organised to bring you hourly, live updates from the show, through our website www.hotelierindia.com.

Be a star!