Processing .....please wait.. 
The article has been forwarded.... 
Indian Americans make a mark in hotel industry
Monday, 10 March 2003, 20:30 IST
WASHINGTON: Indian Americans have carved a strong position for themselves in the U.S. hotel industry, especially in New Jersey area, providing jobs for whole families and cutting costs by running hotels as family affairs.
New Jersey, where the Asian-Indian population more than doubled in the 1990s to nearly 170,000, has the highest number of Indian-owned motels and hotels. Many of the owners are named Patel.
Between the early 1990s and 2000, Asian ownership in the Parsippany, New Jersey-based Cendant Corp. hotel group tripled. Of Cendant's 5,000 franchisees, 44 percent are Asian-Indian.
That's slightly more than the white franchisees and three times as many as the combined total of Pacific Asian, Hispanic and African-American franchisees. Cendant's vice president is Rajiv Bajatia, a native of India.
Prime Hospitality Corp. of Fairfield estimated that one-third of its 65 franchisees are Indian.
Kundan Patel, 57, a native of India who came to the U.S. two decades ago and now owns four budget hotels with her husband, was quoted by a publication as saying that the hardworking and friendly nature of Indians was a key factor in building up clientele.
Gujaratis form the largest segment of the Indian-American population in New Jersey.
Most Indian-operated hotels and motels are strictly family businesses, providing jobs for relatives as well as a place to live.
Indian holdings exploded in the late 1970s when Indians living in Uganda were forced out of the country by political turmoil, Bajatia said. After trying England, they sought warmer climates in the United States.
"You had a chain reaction," Bajatia said. "You had brother calling brother. And when they don't have any more brothers, you have cousins, and the cousins' cousins. And the friends."
Family support is essential, particularly in financing, as relatives pool their resources to get a hotel going, said Paresh Patel, owner of Howard Johnson Inn and Suites on in Paramus, New Jersey.
"When you're an immigrant, it takes a lot of money to buy a business," said Paresh, whose father bought the hotel in the mid-1970s for $3.5 million shortly after moving to the U.S. from Zambia.
According to the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), its 6,000 members own 35 percent of all hotel properties and 50 percent of all economy lodging houses in the U.S.
AAHOA president Mike Amin, whose grandfather opened his first hotel in 1953, said the trend began in the 1940s, when few immigrants bought cheap hotels in San Francisco.
Over the years, the Indian American families acquired more properties.
Paresh Patel's family holdings, for instance, include Hampton Inn in Ridgefield and Hilton Garden Inn in Secaucus, a new $15 million hotel that opened in May. The family plans to break ground on a Hampton Inn in New Brunswick this year.
Indian investment in the hotel industry is unlikely to slow, according to Bajatia, who believes much of it will now come from established owners buying more properties, rather than immigrants.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS