Grand Hyatt Mumbai hows event strength

THE BRIEF
The 4th Hotel Investment Conference – South Asia (HICSA) 2008, organised by the local office of global hospitality consultancy firm HVS, and held at Grand Hyatt Mumbai, aimed to provide a strong networking platform to its participants that included hotel owners, operators,
financiers and investors.

Shivani Grover, associate of HVS Hospitality Services, says: “We have always held HICSA in Mumbai. We chose Grand Hyatt Mumbai again because of its large function and pre-function areas and for its excellent service and staff.”

CHALLENGES
Despite HVS India’s efforts to restrict the number of participants to 550, HICSA 2008 attracted a total of 600 people, around 120 more than the previous year.

Manav Thadani, managing director of HVS India, said quality was of the utmost importance and wanted to keep HICSA exclusive and not turn it into another mass event. Grover says: “It is always a challenge to organise a conference of this size and lots of round-the-clock hard work is behind the success of HICSA.”

EXECUTION
During the ‘Global CEO Outlook’ session panellists gave an overview of their companies and also spoke about the opportunities India offered them. Each panellist also expressed their expectations about the industry in a decade’s time.

Day one ended with the lifetime achievement award and day two started enthusiastically with prizes. The ‘rotating bowl of fortune’ kept everyone’s fingers crossed until the names of the winners were announced.

The event included six concurrent breakout sessions such as ‘Journey from Concept to Construction’, ‘The Great Indian Budget Boom’ and ‘New Restaurant Concepts’. The second set of concurrent breakout sessions had ‘Land Valuations – Has the Summit been Scaled’, ‘The Big ‘B’ and its Impact on Sales and Marketing’ and ‘Spas and Luxury Resorts’. Each of these sessions
commanded an inquisitive audience trying to learn as much as they could.

THE VERDICT
Grover says: “Participants were highly impressed with the well-organised conference and also with the contentrich sessions.”