Sebastien Leitner
Vipul Dayal’s father-in-law died young, but he lived long enough to bring the first Days Inn into California. Long enough to build an empire to hotels, to start a charity. More than most, but I can only imagine what he would have done with more time.
Decades later, Vipul has committed himself to extending that legacy. He asked his mother-in-law for her blessing to drop the Days Inn flag her husband had planted.
That conversation is where our Turned On episode begins today.
Aside from taking that hotel independent, Vipul and his wife also finished a charity his father-in-law started, but didn’t live to see through.
They built a leadership program inside it so that he could teach the next generation what his father-in-law never got the chance to.
Wipro calls this framework all: Advocacy. Leadership.
Legacy, ALL.
That’s the kind of leadership we need in this industry. It’s the kind of leadership possible as an independent.
Worth your time.
Let’s roll the tape.
Vipul, it’s a pleasure to have you on the program. Thank you for joining The Turndown today.
Vipul Dayal
Thank you for having me.
Sebastien Leitner
I want to kick us off with our opening question, which is: keeps you up at night these days?
Vipul Dayal
Oh my God. Recently, what keeps me up this past few days actually has been AI.
How so? Yeah, I’ve been getting like all these like reports from from Cloudbeds and just throwing it in there and then just like, I don’t know, it’s been it’s something that, like, hey. My wife is, like, knocking on the door. Hey. It’s midnight. Time to call you know, time to time to go to bed. I just there’s so much data out there in the PMS that I love it that I that just been using and just getting all this small stuff about guests and patterns and just, it’s been amazing.
Sebastien Leitner
So you’re thinking this AI, I guess, trend is changing how you look at information?
Vipul Dayal
A hundred percent and if you don’t, I mean it’s going to be the future, if you don’t do it now as hoteliers and you’re still stuck in the archaic system, you’re going be left behind. Honestly, people, I just read a statistic that twenty four percent of the people of guests are making reservations and bookings and trip bookings through AI. Wow. So if you’re not getting searched on AI, your hotel is not getting searched on AI, then you’re losing out on this opportunity. It’s just going to be bigger and bigger. The kids, I have three kids, and they’re using AI non stop. So this is going be the future.
Sebastien Leitner
I’m trying to keep my kids from using AI to do homework. Yeah. I wonder how that’s going to work. Anyway, let’s talk about you. You’ve done so many things in hospitality. You’ve been an operator, investor, coach, community builder. What made you become a hotelier to begin with?
Vipul Dayal
That starts with my parents.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay.
Vipul Dayal
They were in the hotel industry in nineteen seventy nine.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay.
Vipul Dayal
And still in the hotel industry, I should say.
Though he doesn’t do much like day to day operations and more of an investor type. But yeah, him and my mom my mom and him, they’re the ones that started it all for me. And then I took a detour. I went to I’m a biology major.
And so I was a couple years I spent as a research scientist and then I decided to go to law school for a little bit and then here I am back into the hotel industry again.
Sebastien Leitner
Which was driven by a sense of duty or a sense of, you know?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah. That’s a good question. My unfortunately, my father-in-law passed away, and my wife is an only child. And he had a big empire.
Big like like in the eighties, they probably had, like, twenty twenty to thirty hotels. So he was big time. And then, like, typical, you know, like, in my parents’ generation, my mother-in-law, she kinda kept just, like, the she didn’t know too much about the businesses, and she just took kind of took care of the household. Yeah.
My father-in-law was doing all the business stuff, so she had no idea. I remember she was asking you what after he passed, he goes, yeah, Vipo, so we have four bank accounts. Right? I’m like, no, mom.
You have fourteen bank accounts. Like, ****. Like, poor thing. She had no idea. So we moved over there for a little bit in San Francisco where hotels are at, and we kinda just started this hotel management empire.
We dove right back in.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s so Yeah, that’s amazing because now you’re running an independent hotel, right? Yes.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, so we converted, it used to be a Days Inn actually, we converted it to our own independent hotel brand,
Sebastien Leitner
which was an amazing experience.
Congratulations. You launched, you kicked off your own hotel company within that portfolio.
Yeah,
Vipul Dayal
yeah, our own hotel management company which then created the brand to replace the Bay Zin.
Sebastien Leitner
And for the listeners who don’t know your property, you’ve converted it, if I’m not mistaken, right at the onset of Covid, is that correct?
Yeah,
Vipul Dayal
so we became independent February twenty eight, twenty twenty, and California shut down March, like officially shut down, we were already getting you there, but we officially shut down March eighteen.
So all this budgeting we had, all this marketing plan we had, all these plans we had, thrown out the window because you couldn’t plan for anything. Everybody just living day to day, honestly. We didn’t know what was going on. The world didn’t know what was going on, so we just trying to survive.
Sebastien Leitner
Dare I say, how did it go on? You’re still around, so it must have there must have been some happy ending in here.
Vipul Dayal
Was good to so twofold on that. One is we took really good care of our employees even though we couldn’t you know give them a regular paycheck we still gave them gift cards so that they could get, you know, get grocery and stuff like that. We still had meetings every once in a while.
So we still kept them engaged. So that helped. Because I knew this was going to be temporary, right? Where there’s nothing would usually last forever. And so what’s well, that and then a lot of government assistance. Luckily, helped as well once we got out of COVID. Sure.
So we’re still here, then, you know, we’re we’re still surviving, doing better every year,
Sebastien Leitner
That’s fantastic.
You base your philosophy, you know, as an operator, investor, coach and community builder around the acronym of Advocacy Leadership Legacy. I love that. I want to copy that.
Can you give us an overview of why you chose these and why they’re
Vipul Dayal
so important to So in the hotel industry, A stands for advocacy.
I am big time involved in advocacy because if we don’t do it as an industry, guess what? Somebody else, our opposition is gonna do it. They’re already doing it. Right?
And for us, especially being in California, unions are the our number one I shouldn’t say enemy, but our number one opposition. If we don’t advocate for ourselves as an industry, then they’re coming in and just they’re they’re just increasing this minimum wage, increasing This is a a bunch of headaches that as a small time independent operator, we don’t wanna deal with. So you I’m I’m involved with I’m on the board actually of California Hotel Lodging Association, which is the largest state hotel association here in America. And I also was a board member of AHOA, which is Asian American Hotel Owners Association, which is the largest hotel owners association in the world.
So from there, I learned a lot of advocacy. And then leadership, the l stands for leadership.
I strongly believe in empowering employees, empowering people to be the next leaders of because I know we’re not going to be here forever, empowering our people so they can become great leaders.
And then the last one is my personal favorite. You can see from my background here, legacy. That’s something that’s very important to me. Like I mentioned earlier, my father-in-law passed away at a very young age, and he’s left a great legacy.
Every time I talk, everybody somebody every time somebody talks about him, I I notice their face, and they always have a smile. You know, he was a community builder. He was a a operator. He was an investor.
So I learned a lot of stuff from him and my dad and my parents as well.
Love that acronym, it stands for everything who I am, honestly.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s beautiful. And it sounds like you want to leave the place, you know, in a better place, or you want to leave the world in a better place.
Vipul Dayal
One hundred percent. That’s why everything I do, honestly, stems around that.
Not only for my kids, but for the industry, especially the independent hoteliers committee. I mean, independent hoteliers in America and everywhere actually. I say committee because I’m part of AHOA’s Asian American hotel owned hotels, independent hoteliers committee. So, we do a lot of stuff through there to educate the independent hoteliers and stuff like that. It’s been great spreading the knowledge.
Sebastien Leitner
You took the courageous decision of creating your own hotel brand. What made you stop being a franchisee?
Vipul Dayal
For us, was very it was hard, because days in, what we were, my father-in-law brought in the first days ins into California Wow. Back in the eighties. So that was a lot of history, and this was one of them. And so there’s a lot of history behind that decision. I wanted to ask my brother-in-law if that’s okay, and she said it was okay.
But yeah, it was a tough decision, but in the overall end, it was great.
You know, I created like this six course module about how to turn, because there was nothing out there. You could hire this expensive consultant to do tens of 20s and 30s thousands of dollars in order to get your hotel independent.
And when I interviewed them, they didn’t know it. It was not much good information. They were ringing it too, it seems like. So started creating my own. I wrote down a lot of stuff to help other people when they want to become independent, and so yeah, that’s where my you know, I just thought, especially the market that I’m at in San Francisco, it’s very conducive to independent properties.
How so? People love it. So? They come to San Francisco thinking like they wanna get like this boutique independent feel, which is, know, San Francisco, whole market is like that.
There’s a lot of great independent boutiques out there. Nice. And so the people crave that. People love that.
And so that’s that’s one of the reasons why we decided to create our own brand.
Sebastien Leitner
It almost sounds like you think as an independent hotel brand, at least given your location, that you may be more successful.
Vipul Dayal
Yes, the market definitely helped.
I do think that there is a simple formula that one could use to see if they want to go independent.
You know, it’s a I used it myself, which is if eighty, if for us, I’ll just give you an example. For us, seventy percent to eighty percent of our reservations were coming from OTAs, right? So that means twenty percent to thirty percent of our reservations were coming from actual the brand.
Vipul Dayal
But the brand, I was paying like, if you add up all the nickel and diming that they did, I was probably paying fifteen percent in order to get that twenty percent to thirty percent of business.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay.
Vipul Dayal
So that means, if you just do the simple math, that means if I want to get rid of the twenty to thirty percent contribution, I probably have to come up with ten to fifteen percent of revenue becoming independent. And how can I do that? Easily, just raise the rates. Because what we were, we were an economy brand.
And so being in San Francisco, when we were full, we were charging like two hundred three hundred dollars a night. And then the people’s mind is like, wait, you’re an economy brand. How are you like, you can’t be charging two hundred three hundred dollars a night, you know? But that’s where our market dictated, because every you know, San Francisco was just growing at the time.
And they’re like, wait. So there was a stigma. And so when I became independent, the stigma was no longer there. Now I could charge, you know, those two, three hundred hour nights, so it became even higher.
Like this actually, today’s a prime example. You know, there’s a big convention in town, we’re we’re charging a couple hundred bucks a night.
Almost two, three times her average.
Congratulations.
Sebastien Leitner
In essence, you know, one validation point is your business mix. So the current brand contribution or the current franchise contribution.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah.
And then
Sebastien Leitner
I guess the second question is, can you raise the, can you replace that business easily or, you know, compensate for potential revenue loss easily?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, that’s where the planning comes, like way ahead of time before you decide to go independent, like almost a year in advance, just to make sure. A lot of people don’t do this thing, which we did at this hotel, which is called a feasibility study. Have you heard of that? Yeah.
Feasibility study? Yeah. It’s we paid, I think, seven thousand five hundred bucks at the time, or maybe ten thousand bucks at the time. But it was amazing experience for us.
The one thing it did for us, it showed us that, hey, there’s no three star or three and a half star property in your comp set. And we were like, well, our current franchise was like two to two and a half stars. So I was like, great, what does it take to become a three, three and a half stars? Come to find out, it was quite easy. You just add a couple of more amenities, and there we go, we raise the rate. So to answer your question, found that going a little bit higher and adding a couple more things allowed us to get that rate differential, to get that monetary difference that the brand was contributing.
Sebastien Leitner
You found consultants, how did you do the market research? Like how did you come up that?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, there’s about four, I interviewed like four people. There’s big companies, real estate companies here, CBRE, HVS, some of these big research companies that they’ll do the study, a feasibility study.
Sebastien Leitner
Nice.
Vipul Dayal
But too many like I said, too many times people don’t do it. They usually do it they usually do it at the beginning, like if you’re trying to build a hotel, they usually try to do that then, but they don’t do it when they’re trying to convert, which I highly recommend to people.
If you’re trying to convert from franchise to independent, you know, get that feasibility study and see how much ADR is in the market, Cause that will
Sebastien Leitner
help.
Almost to your point is a check mark, right? If the feasibility study tells you that it’s possible or gives you the confidence that it’s possible, know, it just makes it more palpable, if you will.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah. No, one hundred percent right. Yeah. It just gives you that validation.
Because in your mind you might be thinking that, oh, this is a great idea. Look at my neighbor. He did it and he’s succeeding and stuff like that. But this is sort of for me gave me the validation.
And I know it seems like a lot of money, but I tell you right now in the overall plan of going independent, it’s nothing. Yeah, it’s very minuscule. I almost consider it almost like an insurance type thing. Yeah.
If
Sebastien Leitner
you, I mean you made that decision probably at some point in twenty nineteen, because you launched your independent brand in twenty twenty.
Rewind the clock for a mere. What would you recommend yourself, you know, had I known this I would have done something differently. What would you tell yourself in this whole process?
Vipul Dayal
Well, whether for COVID, everything everything kind of wrecked. Okay, fine. Plans wrecked COVID, but but I will tell you, in twenty nineteen, as as a as a franchise, it did the best ever in in in the history of the hotel. Like, the most like, you know, revenue of over two billion dollars for a small forty room sized hotel, so which is amazing. So that was the you know, that and then the so so if you go back to the beginning, first of all, we had we knew that the contract was expiring, our franchise agreement was expiring.
Sebastien Leitner
There was a window an opportunity for you to Yeah,
Vipul Dayal
to exercise the right to get out, right?
Yeah. So so so we were we were debating, like, okay, we have this date, let’s do all this research, so that when this date comes, we know whether the exercise is right. Because if we don’t do it, we’re not that we’re stuck, but our contract was like another three more years after that. So we did like a year of research feasibility study. We did a did I interviewed some of my neighbors who already went independent and see what they thought.
I updated some of my stakeholders because one thing that the banks don’t like is you going independent. Because they love a franchise. They have the backing, they have the SOPs, they have, you know, there’s validity already behind that. You going independent, the banks don’t like that.
Actually, one thing I find out, a lot of people don’t know this, is that it could call your note. It could be a default if you go independent and you don’t tell them that you’re going independent. It could be a default and they have a right to call your whole note for your loan.
Sebastien Leitner
So you need to speak to your bank as well, is that one of your check marks?
That’s one of
Vipul Dayal
the check marks.
Module three, or I think it’s module four, my module, my class, is updating your stakeholders. Like get an attorney, a real estate person, updating your bank, you know, your suppliers. Because they might have, your suppliers for example, might be going on franchise like costs, like you get a cheaper cost, now all a sudden you as independent, as one person, as one hotel, your costs are going go up higher.
Marketing plan, you know, you have to get a before the franchisor was doing all your marketing for you, or you know helped you create one, now guess what? You’re on your own as an independent, so you have to update your marketing plan. So yeah, that’s one of the modules.
The first module is Are you ready? That happens at the very beginning. Like, might think you’re ready, but once you do the research, you might not be ready. You know, you might be, oh, you know what? I should stick with the brand.
Sebastien Leitner
It sounds like you learned a lot, and you created this program context.
I did. But is anything you would have told yourself, had I known this, I would have done something differently. What would you have done differently?
Vipul Dayal
Good question. If I would have, I think I started the process too late. Okay. I should have started, like I said, a year earlier, but I think I started only a couple months, and I was cramming through stuff.
So that’s number one.
Number two, honestly, I should have done it earlier.
Like, there was there was a point three years down the line earlier where I should have went independent, and I did it, and I got scared. Mainly, was because I was scared. Was, you know, I had the backing of the franchise, they were doing great, and so I should have done it earlier.
Yeah, other than that, just review the financials. I should review the financials to make a decision faster.
Sebastien Leitner
Interesting. Very useful. Now, with this hotel, right? You went independent, you created your own brand.
Yeah.
How did you come up with that? I mean, what inspired you?
Vipul Dayal
Well, I’m not an expert at branding. I’m a biology major or brand. Okay. So interviewed a couple of people, and I decided to use this one company out of LA who created the brand.
Now a lot of people get confused about the word brand and branding. Okay. If you just take the word itself brand, that’s a noun. And if you branding is a verb, right?
So people think like, oh, yeah, I put up a sign, and that’s my branding. You know, that’s my branding. Oh, that’s my brand. No.
That’s not brand. That’s your branding that you did. You don’t necessarily create they think a sign is just like, you know, oh that’s my brand, or the logo is my brand. No, that’s just part of the branding process.
That’s the that they helped me learn a lot about creating a brand, what was missing in comp set.
They also helped me to make every other decision easier.
So meaning like if I wanted to if I wanted to go out and get like a I mean this is very this is a very like like a small detail, but if I wanted to go out and get a red rug for my hotel, well, that’s not part of our brand, right? We had our own color palette. We had our own voice and tone for our website. We had our own taglines. We had our own we were a black 1950s themed hotel, old school. Nice. And that was lacking from our comp set, so it was a great experience, brand.
Sebastien Leitner
So smart investment, highly recommend to anyone launching their own independent hotel?
Vipul Dayal
One hundred percent, one hundred percent.
I would tell you that again, like in the long run, they’ll make your decisions easier, they’ll make, they’ll be very cost effective,
Sebastien Leitner
and
Vipul Dayal
for the guest that’s looking in and going into your hotel, they love it because everything’s one messaging.
Everything’s you know, they’re not scattered here and there, which is guess what? The franchisers franchisors do it all the time. Yep. We just we just, you know, we just don’t do a good job of it because they always do a good they always do it for us.
So, yeah, it was it was a great experience. I I I loved it. I mean, I have my own font at my hotel.
Sebastien Leitner
Nice.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah. I bought, like, a specific font for my hotel. So it’s, know, it’s it’s great messaging. I love it. I love it.
Sebastien Leitner
And look, as I hear you talk about it, you must have plans to expand on or build upon this. Is that fair?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, we do. We have two other hotels that we’re working on right now in San Francisco area that’s going be part of the brand process.
Sebastien Leitner
So more to come, right? And leveraging that initial investment that you made, I guess around brand brand development, I guess, procedures. Yes. You now have a playbook.
Vipul Dayal
Exactly. Which is which is the same thing franchise origin.
Sebastien Leitner
Same thing.
And I guess your bank or your to your point, your stakeholders now have also the confidence and can look at the success you’ve had with with your previous
Vipul Dayal
hotel.
That’s why it’s very important to have a good relationship with the bank because they will you know they didn’t like it at first, you know because we went independent, but they saw they can’t deny my results as a franchisee.
They saw like where I were when I took it over to where we were at the end, like they can’t deny that, that’s results, that’s hard fat results. And I spent all this time and creating a budget for them they could see that when we go independent, gonna be even better. Yeah. Yeah. So they yeah. They loved it. And then my plans to expand, like you said, they were they were all in.
Sebastien Leitner
Are you saying they’re giving you money now easily or more easily?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, more easily. It’s tough as a brand, mean as an independent to get hotels, I mean to get financing.
Sebastien Leitner
Congratulations, that’s amazing. I want to talk a little bit about community. You’re very actively involved yourself, right? You mentioned that you’re on on the board of directors of the California Hotel Association, you were involved with AHOA.
Why is this so important to you?
It stems back from
Vipul Dayal
my, you know, the word legacy, right?
Trying to create a legacy. And so there’s three different aspects to legacy, which is the first part is like, who helped me?
Is helping me to create a legacy? And so I go back to, to answer your question, to my father-in-law and my parents. They’re the ones that have helped me a lot to create this community. Like I know I’ve seen them become leaders in their community and to give back, which is very important. Strongly believe in karma And what you you know, if you do good, then, you know, you should not that you get good things, but, you know, just the the there’s this positivity behind that.
Putting good in the world. Putting good good stuff out of the world.
So, yeah, that’s I I strongly believe in community, like helping others, and helping my staff where whatever I needed, you know.
Sebastien Leitner
So you encourage your staff to also be part of that same community?
Vipul Dayal
Yes. Hundred percent. They’re part of they’re part of my hotel. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They get business cards just like I do.
Yeah. We empower them just like everybody else in my in my network. We cross train them. We have housekeepers that want to do front desk.
Sure, let’s go. Let’s, you know, come. Yeah, they’re excited. They’re like, one of them was like, a couple days after that, she’s like, oh, yeah, I don’t want.
Thought I wanted to do this, but I don’t want to do it. We have front desk that trains in housekeeping. You know, it’s just a community that we created.
Sebastien Leitner
Yeah. I’m always fascinated by the conversations of like an owners association, for instance, Because you have, you know, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred like minded owners and operators sharing their challenges, sharing their opportunities, how they see things.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah.
Sebastien Leitner
And you may get very unfiltered view. Yeah. Which is actually so refreshing.
It’s not what the brands tell you, it’s not what the consultants tell you, it’s actually what their challenges and opportunities are from their point of view.
Vipul Dayal
I love it, networking. Ahoa, like I mentioned earlier, is twenty thousand members. So imagine all the different views that you get from that.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s an amazing community. And you know, you could probably tap into that community and ask questions, you know, around what’s your experience been?
Vipul Dayal
One hundred percent. Actually, two years ago we launched, me being the head of the independent hoteliers committee, we launched our own independent hotelier summit within AHOA.
We had about three hundred people attend. Last year, it was standing room only. We had more than three hundred people attend. But it was from ten to three, straight talking about independent hoteliers.
Yeah, so it was the things that we learned, the things that they taught us, whether the last session is always about Q and A’s. Like hey, what did you what did you think about today? What can we do different? Because it’s always I feel like it’s always one-sided.
Like, we’re speaking down not down, but, like, we’re speaking towards the membership. Well, is the last session is opposite. Everybody is equal, you know, we get to learn from you. What did you do about this marketing?
What did you do about that? And then vice versa. They get to learn from us.
Sebastien Leitner
What’s the most common question you get?
Vipul Dayal
The number one most common question, I guess, probably, why did you go into bed? Okay. Like like like what was the reason behind it? You know, and I always I always bring back my formula.
Yeah. Like like for me financial was probably number one because we were already doing so good Yeah. As a franchise. So we wanted to make sure to preserve that.
And then, you know, I wanted I wanted to do there’s part of me that’s create not I’m not creative, but, like, you know, I wanna build my own legacy. I wanna create my own brand.
So that that that had to do with it too.
Sebastien Leitner
You wanna leave something behind. You mentioned you you have three kids. Right?
Vipul Dayal
Yes, I want them to see, like, yeah, I want them see the legacy, actually.
Sebastien Leitner
Yeah.
You must be investing heavily in teaching staff, new leaders, Have things and, you know, labors have been very difficult to find good quality team members, at least that’s we hear from hotel owners around the world, right? That staff and recruitment and retention is one of the most important things that they invest time and energy in.
Have things improved with the next generation growing up, or, you know, are we still in the same situation right now?
Vipul Dayal
So we have a just kind of backtrack a little bit, we have my father-in-law created this charity which unfortunately he didn’t get to finish it because he passed away but my wife and I finished it on his behalf.
Sebastien Leitner
Nice.
Vipul Dayal
And one of the things that we created was this leadership program. So like you mentioned, there’s been a gap. What we found out in our community, in our Indian community, is that the older parents are retiring, right? The same thing in my situation, my dad and mom are close to retiring, and the young guys are coming in like, you know, they got their chest prowled, they’re beating on, like, I’m the leader now, you know, this multi million dollar hotel, you do as I say. And the employers are like, and the employees are like, wait, we’ve been dealing with your mom and dad this whole time. Who are you? We haven’t even seen you at the hotel.
So we created this leadership program to address that issue. Like, hey, let’s let’s it’s a three step module. It’s engagement, motivation, and accountability. So let’s lead let’s teach let’s teach you how to lead with love is what what we like to call it.
And what that means is, like, like, let’s get to learn like, you mean, like, myself? I I wanna learn about you as a as my as you and my employee. There’s we don’t have any employee issues at our hotel, and we’ve been we’ve been lucky. But I’ll give you an example.
Like, my manager, whenever when our managers move on, one of the questions I ask him in the interview process is, like, just to let or one of the things I tell him is, hey. Just to let you know, you’re not you’re only working with me for six to nine years, like, at the most. Right? And they’re like, what?
Why? Because, well, my goal for you is for you to have your own hotel. So guess what? Every single one of my managers has their own hotel to this day.
Sebastien Leitner
No way.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, and some of them might have to borrow money, but I don’t care. That’s my goal for them. And once people hear that kind of mentality, you know, they love working for us, because we’re building people up. We’re empowering people, And so same thing that this module, this course does, is that it gets people to recognize, get to know their employees, that’s the engaging part.
We do a test called don’t know if you have you ever heard DISC and motivators test? No. Yeah, it’s like a personality test, I do it for all my key employees, all my managers, for my business, all my businesses, and it gets me to know who they are as a leader, right? So, for example, the other day, we just hired somebody new, and this is not good or right or wrong or bad or anything, but you know, one of the things that we learned is she’s not one of those people that runs away from the fire, for example.
She runs towards the fire. So guess what I did? I took the fire prevention drill from somebody else’s from my managers and put that with her. Because she likes dealing with stuff like that.
You know, that’s that’s that’s that’s that’s so she’s she’s in charge of fire fire prevention and fire safety. She just loves that kind of that sort of thing. And so it’s nice.
Sebastien Leitner
So so you’re creating teams with personas that complement each other?
Vipul Dayal
Exactly, right? Exactly, yeah. So she does she’s not a people person. Guess what? I’m not gonna put her in charge with leading the tour.
This is I’m talking about my wife’s school. She has a preschool. So like, I’m not gonna put her in charge of, like, leading tours for parents. That’s not her forte.
I’ll take it out of hers and put it into somebody that loves dealing with people. But again, that goes with getting to know your people. You have to know your people. And so spend the time to get to know your people.
Because and then once you know your people, then it’s easy to motivate them.
One of the things that this test does, it allows you to have you heard that saying, like do unto others as you want to be done? Right? So that’s the golden rule. I believe in a platinum rule, which is like, do unto others as they treat others how they want to be treated.
Not to me, but how they understand them, get to know them. So that kind of revolves around this whole fantasy I mean, not fantasy, this whole module about engagement, accountability, and motivation.
Sebastien Leitner
Nice.
Vipul Dayal
Once you engage people, and once you know what motivates them, it’s easy to hold them accountable.
Of course. It’s easier, I would say.
Sebastien Leitner
Easier.
Vipul Dayal
Easier.
Sebastien Leitner
Do you think that hospitality still has a reputation program? I loved your references, I’m going to hire you and in seven years you’re going to be running your own hotel. I mean that’s a great sales pitch for me. However, are younger generations attracted to hospitality from your point of view?
Vipul Dayal
More and more I’m seeing them getting out. Okay. They’re not necessarily getting out, but they’re not in the day to day operations like our parents were, like my So they’re more of like, oh, let me hire a manager company or let me I don’t wanna do this data mom. I wanna do x y and z. So yeah, unfortunately I’m seeing more and more of that in the industry.
Sebastien Leitner
Do we make it attractive again? Can we?
Vipul Dayal
I think once they see all the freedoms that they get, I think they’re too stuck on the past of our parents working, working, working, doing everything. I think nowadays, it’s so much easier to like, I don’t live in any of the spaces where my hotels are. Okay. So which means I have a lot of checks and balances. Sure. There’s a lot of communication involved with my managers, a lot of trust involved with all my people.
Sebastien Leitner
So You’re no longer the owner that lives on premise, right?
Vipul Dayal
Yes, exactly. And in my culture, that was the big thing of my parents’ generation, the biggest thing. So they still have this mentality, like, oh, I got to do all this work, but not necessarily. Plus, look all the freedom you get.
You get to make money while you sleep, right? The reservations are coming in. Get to have freedom if you want to travel, if your hotel’s set. If I want to go and work in Mexico, Cabo, I can, because I’m already remotely as it is.
So, it’s just kind of shifting their kind of focus a little bit from old school to, like, you know, what it can be.
Sebastien Leitner
Yeah.
Want to talk a little bit about the future, how you see things, you know, fast forwarding. Before we do, do want to do a quick rapid fire. I’m going to give you a choice and then you pick or you say what comes to mind.
There’s no filter. There’s no right or wrong. Just what comes to mind, if you will.
Profit or freedom?
Vipul Dayal
Long term profit over freedom.
Sebastien Leitner
Biggest mistake owners
Vipul Dayal
make?
I would say they don’t do budgets.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay. Most overrated metric?
Vipul Dayal
For me, I would say now occupancy.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay, most underrated metric?
Vipul Dayal
There’s this new thing called TrevPar.
Yeah. About that? Yep. TrefPar? Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s that’s the most underrated. Think not too many people know about that still.
Sebastien Leitner
For for our listeners, define TrefPar just that everyone knows what you can.
Vipul Dayal
Yeah. TrefPar is when you use, like, not just rooms, but you use like your food and beverage, your your your let’s say you have like a spa available at your like all these different things. To me, I use it in a little more broader sense, like taking every square footage of your hotel and see how you can maximize that square footage. Grocery stores do a great job of that. Know, they put on the end caps, they put all the most things that they can sell, and they do a fantastic job of maximizing their revenue, their floor space. So kind of the same concept as grocers do, but putting it into the hotel world.
Sebastien Leitner
If you could rewrite one industry role, what would that be?
Vipul Dayal
Probably that customers are always right, our guests are always right.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay, so kill that rule, is that it?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah, modify it, modify it. Eighty-twenty. Eighty percent of them are right, twenty percent of them are not so right.
Sebastien Leitner
Okay, So guests are sometimes right. Is that your new role?
Exactly. I like it. One uncomfortable truth hotel owners need to hear.
Vipul Dayal
One uncomfortable truth that hotels need to hear. They probably need to hear that profit.
Like short term profit is not good for the hotel.
I think they need to maximize long term profits so that employee sustainability happens.
Because that’s for me that’s the main important part. Like I said, I’m not there at the hotel and so I need my employees to be there And so, yeah.
Sebastien Leitner
At all times. Very good. I asked you the opening question, what keeps you up at night, right? And you went quickly to AI, right? Which is sort of in everyone’s mind. I want to talk a little bit about the future, how you see, you know, some technology, political it doesn’t matter, right, what we talk about, right? How it is potentially impacting hospitality from your point of view.
Do you think are some major I mean, we have some political unrest in the Middle East right now, we have some, you know, travel bans happening left and right, you know, inbound travel is down in the US. But let’s fast forward beyond that. How do you see things, what’s your outlook when it comes to travel?
And then I want to talk a little bit about technology as well. How are you thinking about the future?
Vipul Dayal
I think the future actually is gonna be really, really great once we get once we kinda stabilize things. We’ve already seen that happen right now. Yeah. The war yeah. Middle East kinda I was not expecting that, but but but people are slowly starting to become accustomed to what we’re do politically what we’re doing here in America. And so it’s making it easier, I feel like, for them to travel a little bit better.
But now with the Middle Middle East, it’s kinda gone gone back to square one, it seems like. But but I think it’s you know, what, like for San Francisco, I’ll give you a prime example. San Francisco was the first city in America to close down for COVID, and the last city to open up in America for COVID. So it devastated the city.
Like, there’s travel. Like, we’re still not recovered from twenty nineteen. But what goes down must come up. So we’ve been it’s it’s it’s happening.
We’re not there yet since twenty nineteen, but it’s slowly we’re slowly getting there. So I think, you know, I think we will probably in about two years, a year or two, probably next year, a year or two, that we should get there to our two thousand nineteen numbers. Some hotels, like my Dallas hotels, they’re doing even better than two thousand nineteen.
It just depends on the political who’s in charge over there, unfortunately.
And then AI in the future, technology. Yeah.
Love technology.
I’m incorporating that more and more in our hotels.
And we do a lot of stuff at the hotel. We try a lot of stuff at the hotels. There’s this very technological driven.
But I love it. I think it’s gonna be the future. I think if we could enhance the guest experience through technology, it’s gonna be a win win for everybody.
Sebastien Leitner
How soon until there will be no more receptionist? What’s your take?
Vipul Dayal
I’ve already seen, like, certain hotels do that. Okay. Yeah. Matter of fact, I’m getting rid of my front We have, like, a traditional sized front desk, like a traditional, you know, you come to the desk.
Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna blow that up and then, like, just create a couch, two couches. Okay.
If somebody wants to if somebody wants to come in and actually wanna talk to one of my employees or a front desk, fine, they’ll come from the back with a tablet, have a seat on the couch. Nice.
You get a welcome drink, you know, we have our own wine for the hotel, our
Sebastien Leitner
own I’ll come to see you, no problem. You
Vipul Dayal
get a welcome drink, you know, beer, wine, whatever you want over there, and just relax.
But I will tell you, and I know this is not a plug for Cloudbeds, but ever since we moved to Cloudbeds, that what you just said right there has allowed us to do that even more, where the guests don’t even have to come in and talk to the desk. They could just come in and go straight to the room. Right? And as an independent hotelier, the big boys are doing that.
The Marriotts are doing that. The Hilton’s already doing that. But for us as a little guy to be able to do that, oh, I love that. That’s that’s just because the the album beginning to be like that, where I don’t wanna go to the front desk.
You
Sebastien Leitner
know, sure.
And and thanks for the plug on Cloudbeds. I really appreciate. I’m not gonna say no to this, but my point is it also needs an owner that actually wants that. Right?
That you you want this as an experience. Right? Sure. Because otherwise, you know, we could offer you a great tool, but you know, if you’re not embracing it, it’s something that you want to see happening.
Vipul Dayal
True. I mean, that’s where education comes in. So, remember I was telling you about AHOA, how we do this independent hotelier summit? So part of our two sessions is incorporating AI with revenue management.
So our first session, we’re actually talking about like, what is it? Like what is AI and what is RMS? We got professors speaking about it and stuff like that. And in the second session, we have actually PMS system that’s going be talking about how they actually use AI and how they actually put it into RMS, implementation.
Strategic? I mean, we’re talking about like the actual philosophy of it and then we’re actually talking about the implementation.
Sebastien Leitner
So if we educate people, I think that’s where it starts.
People, two closing questions. One is, what’s your next trip where you’re traveling to, right, number one, and then number two, could be personal, could be a business, whichever it is, and number two, your all time favorite hotel.
Vipul Dayal
Oh, nice, okay, I wasn’t ready for that one, alright.
Where I’m traveling to, I’m kind of restricted on travel travel right now because of my situation, but when I do get to travel, I’m gonna go with my daughter and go see all these colleges. She’s already been through she’s already been through one, two, three, four colleges without me. Okay. Well, my wife has taken her. But can’t wait to go on this journey with her and try to pick her up.
Sebastien Leitner
Where would you like her to go to? Can you say that?
Vipul Dayal
Yeah. I would love for her to go anywhere where Southwest flies within three hours, why do have to get a connecting flight?
I want her to close. She’s daddy’s girl. Know this is being recorded, all my kids know.
I know you’re supposed say favorites, but yeah, my first one, yeah.
Sebastien Leitner
It’s fine. This is a safe Somewhere closer.
Vipul Dayal
Somewhere close. She applied to all these schools for the East Coast, and I should.
Sebastien Leitner
I don’t know how to change that. My oldest is in high school, and at some point he will want to move as far away from me as possible.
Vipul Dayal
That’s exactly my situation.
Yeah, that’s why I want to travel. That would probably be number one. My friend’s having a birthday party in Aruba in August, so that’s probably I’m looking forward to that part.
Sebastien Leitner
That’s excellent. All All time favorite hotel?
Vipul Dayal
All time favorite hotel has to be, oh, I would say a probably an all inclusive hotel. No. I wanna go India.
Yeah. I’m gonna go to India.
There was one in Mumbai that we went to.
Was it the Taj? I think it was the Taj. It was, like, hands down, like, well, the service there is very, very inexpensive. So it was unbelievable service, like, hand like, head to toe.
So I really like that part of it. They didn’t have technology too much, but it it didn’t matter. The rules were nice to you. So but but the service, really liked it.
Sebastien Leitner
Alright. We’ll have to put that on the bucket list. Vipul, thank you for your story. Thank you for your insights. Thank you for spending a bit of time with me on this program. Really appreciate it.
Vipul Dayal
Really appreciate for having me.
Sebastien Leitner
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