Women Leadership in the Hospitality Industry

THE HOSPITALITY industry’s mind set has always been progressive when it comes to women in leadership. The challenge lies when one needs to exercise this mind-set at the grass root level. Whilst some organisations encourage and implement actions which encourage women to actively participate and take up positions of leadership, others on the contrary look at women in leadership roles as need based. To put it in perspective, Marriott proactively encourages to grow the percentage of women workforce in every hotel as one of the key priorities and there has been a considerable positive change since the last few years with the number of hotels increasing in India. This has provided a larger platform of opportunities to women. In fact, due to the increase of Marriott in second and third tier cities in the country, a great number of local talent especially women have been encouraged to consider a career in hospitality. Every organisation has a manifest to increase women in leadership – gender diversity percentage at all levels. However, in today’s competitive times, it is the objective of every leader to get the right person to do the job and the decision to hire is not basis the gender but purely based on the right skill set. 

One of the biggest challenges women face themselves are limited opportunities for career advancement. The primary reason for the same is mobility. If women are not mobile which is in considerable amount of cases, then the advancement in their career is limited. This can be due to various circumstances in life – a single mother, a woman taking care of ailing parents, or a woman who is not the sole bread earner of the family and has to take into consideration her partner’s career as well, to name a few. 

My journey with Marriott has been since 2000 and this has been a fulfilling experience where Marriott has grown within India and so have I. From the beginning of my career, I always had an open mind-set and did not allow my restriction of mobility to hamper my dreams of career advancement. Marriott supported me in all stages of my professional career to give flight to my wings right from the start, when I was a Sales Manager at the Renaissance Mumbai Hotel and Convention Center to being the Area Director, National Sales – India over the span of 18 years. Due to my razor sharp focus and determination to make a mark in the industry I proved myself in every assignment I was made responsible for and hence I build trust and was looked as a reliable asset in the organisation and continued to be assigned complex roles. 

In 2018, I realised that I had achieved my mission in sales and marketing and wanted to diversify. As a person, I have never sought the easy way out and always believed that I can do more. I wanted to push myself to gain a well-rounded perspective of the hospitality industry and be an expert in all areas and not just one. This was my long-range projection to be an expert to run hotels not just sell them! This was the turning point in my career where I took the plunge to move into running the hotel operations, a domain which was new to me. This new role had its own share of challenges, where I had to adapt to a new environment, a new mind-set and lead a team of people who were experts themselves. It was an uphill task to accept that I was no longer an expert of my domain and hence it was imperative for me to have the right attitude – humility, passion, determination and courage. These were my pillars, which led me to build my brand in the world of operations. My personal life also witnessed change where I brought about visible changes in my lifestyle - with more time being spent at my workplace and the balance limited time left at home with my kids. 

2019 has been a phenomenal year with stellar results for The Westin Mumbai Garden City and I am proud that my contribution has lead the team to success. The message that I would like to share with all the young women professionals who are aspiring to be in leadership roles in the near future is to realise their potential. We as women inherently can handle any challenge that life throws at us. We have the skill to compartmentalise but we need to start implementing it in our daily lives. This way we can balance both work and personal lives and be content. Many a times, we feel that we have compromised either our career or personal aspect and we have this tendency to always feel guilty – we don’t need to be! We sometimes undervalue our own selves and we need to first respect and love ourselves, only then will the world know we mean business!