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With inflation hitting the roof, effects of post recession and no end in sight to licensing issues, problems of hoteliers are far from over. But what is it that is ailing the Indian hospitality industry at present? Hotelierindia.com in partnership with Hafele India invited some of the top GMs in Mumbai, to discuss everything vegetable prices and government policies to hiring agendas and social networking sites.
Are government regulations business-friendly?
Guy Godet: In today’s world when communication and the speed of travel is getting faster, India is not very competitive. It is sad to see that so much effort is needed to reach any little goal.
It would be good to see a strong group of motivated people or a lobbying body that could address this, because when you have bought a hotel, you have 50+licenses and if you can’t move a bottle of wine from one restaurant to another, it does get quite difficult at some point.
The hotel industry is only going to grown, so I think it would be a good idea for someone to report to a minister of trade or tourism maybe and ask them to look into our issues including VAT and if it is ever going to be nationalised.
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How do you make this noise?
Guy Godet: I think that the FHRAI is a good body to do this, but the fact that this has been going on for a while shows that nothing has been done so far. There are lot of people involved in India to bring about such changes, but I am not sure where one should start.
If you look at the BBC every morning, India is on the top news every day, so from an outsider’s viewpoint one wouldn’t know such challenges really exist in a country as dynamic as this.
Ajoy Balkrishna: There is the media and publications like Hotelier India which could be a big help. The FHRAI is doing the best it can.
Kuldeep Bhartee: Apart from the FHRAI and the HAI there are various boards and associations for several hotels and restaurants and we see that even there, rules and regulations are often tedious and unacceptable, especially in other states.
Like the liquor licensing; in some places we take one license per state and its enough, whereas in other states one has to take a different license for every restaurant.
Anuraag Bhatnagar: All states have different rules. Like Rajasthan has the single window clearance scheme for all projects. So if you are opening a new project in Jaipur or Jaisalmer, a senior officer or bureaucrat would be assigned by the tourism ministry and would be empowered to see that all the rules and regulations are being levied.
So there has been some progress made. We also didn’t have problems such as the liquor licensing; these I think are very Mumbai-centric problems. Every state has a different set of rules and regulations that are monitored differently with different levels of execution.
This is one main reason why we don’t have a single unified voice to talk openly about our problems.
Is the FHRAI doing enough? Are they addressing all problems on a pan-India level and not at the state issue level?
Manish Sodhi: Currently, I think the FHRAI is looking at single-window clearance for all licenses for hotels. They are looking at making hospitality into infrastructure and once that happens all the taxations and licensing will disappear.
In India, the problem is that everything has its own course of time and the government decides what should be given importance. We try and lobby, but ultimately the government decides. So Mumbai is the only state that has excise laws - only Mumbai and Bangladesh in fact.
But then, this again is a big job market. If you remove this law, thousands of people will go out of work. Also, because hotels have big amounts of money, the government feels it is right to tax them.
If a hotel can spend `10 lakhs at an event, they can easily shell out `25,000 for taxes, is the logic. So, we all have our own way of handling these situations.
Harry Thaliwal: Jumping on the same bandwagon, I would say apart from financial and revenue concerns, there is the issue of inefficiency too. That’s not core business. We get so caught up in all these licensing issues that there isn’t enough time to look after our customers.
Guy Godet: It’s a cumbersome existence to start with. There is nothing wrong with paying taxes or license fees, but it is just about making it simple. Overall, it is a very cumbersome process. So, if it is about the licenses, the best solution is to just have one license and be done with it.
Manish Sodhi: Yes that is in the cards. You buy one license for one building and you don’t have to worry for a whole year. In India, things will happen but getting them to fall into place will take time. What about access to food and water? You all mentioned that as a problem. Guy Godet: Yes! Now again, you have water from borewells or simple borewells, or from the BMC or you buy it.
So, I am very concerned from the point of view of an operator, a citizen and a guest that resources are close to being exhausted at a place in the country, which has people who are very poor. The fact is that our hotel needs about 30-35 tankers of water daily, but there are days when we get only 15 to 20, so we really have to make use of whatever we get till the last drop. This should be the concern of the government and ours that the natural resources are very limited and if we exhaust them today it will be very difficult for us all later.
Kuldeep Bhartee: What we are doing as a community is more important than what the government is doing. It should be the hotelier’s choice how we choose to save. We on our part use recycled water in our hotel.
Harry Thaliwal: We try not to depend on tanker water; we try to recycle it. Else, what basically will happen is that the demand will be so high and will have to be divided among all the small businesses, that you would end up paying a bomb for it.
Manish Sodhi: If you see the newspapers, everybody is talking about going green. The hotels are doing their bit in the process. They have reduced the shower pressures and flush water is being recycled.
Anuraag Bhatnagar: It is also execution, not just marketing. It is as important to work on the going green parameters as maintaining occupancy and improving luxury levels for our guests. Very small and accurate targets have been created to see if these targets are being achieved.
Guy Godet: In India, there are places where people have to go miles for a bucket of water. So one has to be consciously careful about the whole scenario. In Mumbai, when it rains, buckets of water just go down the drain and back to the sea. What is being done about it?
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COMMENT
Mr.sodhi To make the legal issues and the licensing part easy all the hotels who are recruiting the managers any level p