Hot Seat

Eastern hospitality

This first generation hotelier prefers to be called a professional in the service industry. Indeed, Jitendra K Mohanty, MHCIMA, managing director of Swosti Group, has established himself not only in the hospitality arena but in travel as well. Yet, he tells Reema Sisodia that he is yet to taste success

To make a mark in the field of hospitality and tourism and to position Orissa, nay, the entire eastern India, on the global map has been his childhood dream. What's more - Jitendra K Mohanty MHCIMA, managing director of Swosti Group, may well be on his way to do so.

In 1980, Mohanty decided to give wings to these dreams and registered for Cornell University's three month course in hotel management - an executive development programme designed for hospitality professionals to be conducted in New Delhi. For a student of political science, this was a huge step. But for Mohanty this was exactly what he had always wanted to do.

With no background in hospitality, he applied for the course as a budding hotelier from eastern India and got through. And as certain things seem to always work themselves out, his family in Orissa who was in the construction business, had by then bought land for a hotel project. In a year, Mohanty was setting the foundation stone for his first hotel project Hotel Swosti in Bhubaneswar, Orissa. The four-star hotel, which is recognised by the ministry of tourism, started operations in 1984.

Nevertheless, Mohanty's passion was not restricted to hospitality but extended to the entire service sector. "I consider hospitality and tourism as inseparable," he says. He therefore set into action and established Swosti Travels in Orissa by 1987 with offices in New Delhi and Kolkata. "I wanted to popularise the eastern sector as a potential tourist destination. When I started my hotel, I realised there was not a single professional travel agency in the region. Swosti Travels managed to fill that void. Today it functions as a complete tour operating company which sells the entire east with packages ranging from the unconventional to the traditional; from the regular highlights of Orissa, West Bengal and the North East to safaris, tribal tourism, tortoise tourism in Orissa, etc," he reveals.

Years of achievement

One thing led to another and there was no stopping him. He went ahead and set up another hotel project in 1998 called Swosti Plaza, a five-star property which has the largest convention facility in eastern India with a capacity of accommodating 1,600 people.

Rashtriya Sanman, one of the many awards Mohanty has received for his stellar achievements

With three projects firmly in place, one would expect him to take it easy. But Mohanty was made of sterner stuff. He further expanded the Swosti brand into the resort segment and in 2002 he opened Swosti Palm Resort in Gopalpur, a beach destination. It has now frozen plans to set up two new beach resorts in Puri and at Chilka Lake. The company has already received all the necessary CRZ permits for the projects. A business hotel in Duburi is also on the anvil and is slated to be operational by May 2009. Apart from a host of awards that he has won over the years (including Scroll of Honour from Sun Circle, West Bengal in 1996, Young Entrepreneurship Award for the year 2004, Citizen Award 2000) Mohanty has also been elected as chairman of Hotel & Restaurant Association of Orissa this September.

With so many projects in hand, one would expect him to get into international tie-ups as well. The reply could not have been more candid. Without mincing words, Mohanty says, "My advice to all hotel owners is to be careful while getting into international tie-ups. No doubt branding is important but it is not the ultimate thing. A tie-up should guarantee business from abroad but I have burnt my fingers once and hence I can say with experience that there are international brands that enter into India only to milk the region without providing any gains. It is high time we start building our own brands like the Taj. We have a dearth in the three- and two-star hotel category and with the way domestic tourism in India is growing, the budget segment has a great future." Today, he is building his own professional system and with few genuine supporters like Narayanan from TFCI (who funded the Swosti Plaza project) who had faith in Mohanty in the most trying times, there is no looking back.

He adds that India today also lacks trained manpower in the service industry since at present we are losing out the human capital to BPOs and other industries. But he also feels that this phase will change in the next five years and hospitality will reap rewards in the coming years. He also feels that it is high time the ministry of tourism concentrates more on the eastern region as other areas like the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur circuit, Kerala and Goa are all exhausted. "This pressure can be easily diverted to other regions of India, which at present gets diverted to neighbouring regions like Sri Lanka, Singapore, Thialand etc. By developing other pockets in the country, our inbound traffic will remain with us," he says.

The guiding force

Most people have a mentor and for Mohanty his father was his main guiding force; he was his consultant and confidante. Says Mohanty, "I learnt two principles from my father which I strictly follow in business - to be honest and to never hurt anyone whether it's a customer or staff. Every decision I make I keep him as witness although he is no more with me."

He continues, "There was a time when I thought I was smart and did not listen to him for which I suffered dearly for four years (the time when Swosti Plaza became a reality). My father had told me then before I floated the project that Bhubaneswar was yet not ready for such a mega hospitality project and that I should wait for a while. But I decided to go ahead and I faced the consequences."

Sharing his aim, he says, "I want to work hard with honesty, to be able to satisfy as many people as I can by giving them employment, to provide quality services, interact with more and more people around the world and putting up beautiful properties that are admired by all. This is what I want my contribution to the society at large to be."

With so much achieved in so little time, the taste of success must taste very sweet. But Mohanty says, "As far as success goes, I am yet to know what it is. Attaining success is not like an exam where either you pass or fail. Success is a continuous endeavor and I think it will continue till my death. Perhaps after I die, people will be able to say whether I was a success or not."