The Indian hospitality sector is one of the oldest as well as most profitable sectors showcasing Indian heritage, cuisine as well as cultural significance to foreigners. While the sector was going through an extremely dull face during the pandemic due to restrictions on travel, it has since bounced back to the pre-pandemic era within a year itself. Keeping the vast opportunity in the hospitality sector in mind, Chandrika Sultania started her standalone hospitality venture, Imperial Park in Gurgaon.

Using her extensive experience in various sectors such as advertisement, copyrighting, training, interior designing, strategizing operations, and so on, Chandrika’s mantra is to provide a wonderful customer experience to visitors through effective client engagement as well as proper implementation of systems and processes. Thanks to her diligent efforts as well as able leadership, Imperial Park has a loyal base of happy and satisfied customers. In an exclusive interview with women entrepreneur Chandrika Sultania shares her prior professional experience, her journey in the hospitality sector so far, and much more:

Shed Some Light On Your Early Educational Journey & The Prior Industry Experience That You Bring To The Table. What Motivated You To Foray Into The Indian Hospitality Industry?

Though an alumnus of Air Force Bal Bharti School, early schooling happened at over a dozen more schools in various cities. Armed with a B.Com (Hons) from Sri Venkateshwara College, DU, a degree in advertising, and a Bachelor of Education from MDU, Chandrika started her career with advertising & client servicing, moved to adult training, instruction design & development, and soft skills training. During this period noticing a huge lacuna in effective & strategic communication skills amongst young professionals, she set up institutes to provide professional language skills to adults.

With the advent of the BPO sector in Gurgaon, there was a burgeoning demand for trained or semitrained HR resources and it seemed apt to utilize my communication skill set in this field. And that’s when I set up an HR Firm to provide manpower to corporates facing a severe crunch of professionals equipped with effective & purposeful communication skills. After which I went into the corporate sector, training manpower in systems, processes, voice & accent, and culture abridgment.

Thereafter I got pulled into operations and set up a call center for a leading hotel chain which honed my operational expertise in strategizing design and setting up streamlined operations. Having had enough of operations I quit work and took time to traverse across the world and spent a couple of years traveling and getting recharged. On returning to India, certain opportunities propelled me into construction and Interior Designing and I set up a boutique design firm and got a chance to design boutique properties.

And as fate would have it from designing properties to running one seemed a natural transgression. In hindsight, my professional journey can best be described as a roller coaster ride traversing industries; extremely challenging & filled with nail-biting excitement but completely satisfying & engaging!

Tell Us About The Foundation Of Imperial Park. In Your Opinion What Makes The Hotel Truly Unique?

Interestingly the journey started by constructing the hotel which we did and conveniently leased out. However, life had other plans and some years later the circumstances turned such that I had no option but to get into running the property and managing the whole show! And that is how the story of Imperial Park started.

We worked steadfastly with this guiding principle and designed & built our systems and processes in such a manner that we could operate out of a single ecosystem for both the front end and back end. With regulated & monitored systems we have been able to establish & maintain standardized service protocols while our CRM helps us to leverage a personal touch to each of our guests.

"Go ahead with your dream of becoming an entrepreneur, but before that, first gain relative work experience in your domain of interest which will help you in avoiding pitfalls"

The core of our complete operation has been to make ourselves always available for our clients and touch base with them throughout their stay. We offer a 100 percent guarantee regarding customer satisfaction with a money-back policy in case any problem is found in our service, which I think helps us stay ahead of the curve.

What Are The Various Roles & Responsibilities That You Currently Shoulder At Imperial Park? What Are Some Of The Most Pressing Challenges That You Face As The Owner? How Do You Successfully Tackle Them?

As the Owner & Managing Partner at Imperial Park, I take care of guest relations, resource hiring as well as system & processes. Being in the hospitality domain expects your attention 24/7. A guest shouldn’t suffer due to any kind of maintenance issues or accidental crises such as equipment malfunction or breakdown, the power going off, and so on. While we have an extremely well-trained team of staff over the property to take care of these issues, to be available for situations like that and make sure the client doesn’t suffer because of the crisis itself is a huge responsibility.

I also give a lot of importance to client feedback and take action based on them. However, as a boutique property with limited resources, taking care of guest relations as well as systems and processes is a huge challenge. To mitigate these challenges, I always try to fine-tune the processes. I am actively engaged in team enrichment. We have an intensive onboarding process for all new hires along with continuous resource development. At the same time, we also believe in hiring fast and firing faster. We allow learning and development for the resources along with the flexibility of department migration but if we don’t see appropriate development in them, then we don’t take the time to show the door.

What Would Your Advice Be To Young Women And Girls Who Also Aspire To Become Business Leaders & Entrepreneurs In The Future?

Entrepreneurship can be empowering and young girls and women alike should aspire to be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship offers you immense flexibility in coordinating your personal and professional life while raising your confidence and offering life-enrichening perspectives. It makes you an effective planner & resource utilizer and makes you resolute with a capacity to fight back.

My advice to young girls and budding entrepreneurs is to go ahead with their dream of becoming an entrepreneur, but before they start on this exciting journey collect their arsenal in the form of knowledge in the related domain and hands-on work experience as these will help in making the overall journey efficient and in avoiding pitfalls. For me, Change is the only constant. There is also another quote by Rumi that I live my life by, which is 'What you seek is seeking you'.