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R E D A L L OV E RA LU M N I N E W Sh o n o r s a n d awa r d schief strategy officer of Travelio,a company she cofounded at age 23, accepted the EY NextGen Awardduring the EY World Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Forum inMonaco in June. The award highlights the entrepreneurial achieve ments of young successors to family business leadership. Travelio,a short-term home rental provider for the Indonesian domestic andinbound market, is an indirect subsidiary of PT Surya SemestaInternusa, her family’s business, in which she is a third-generationmember. Travelio offers more than 3,000 rental properties in 25 citiesand aims to be Indonesia’s top online alternative booking rental plat formby the end of 2017. Also this year, Forbes named Suriadjaja to their30 Under 30 Asia list in the category of retail and e-commerce.CH R I STI NA S U R IAD JAJA , M M H ,andvice presi dent and president, respectively,of Cayuga Sustainable Hospitality,won the 2017 National GeographicWorld Legacy Award, in thecategory of Earth Changers, fortheir Cayuga Collection hotelsand lodges in Costa Rica andNicaragua. The award, whichwas presented at ITB Berlin inMarch, recognizes cutting-edgeleadership in environmentallyfriendly business practices andgreen technology, from renew ableenergy and water conservationto zero-waste systems and carbonemissions reduction. At LapaRios in Costa Rica, Cayuga alsoaids scientific research to pro tect highly endangered wildfeline pop u l ations, providesenvi ron men t al education toarea children, and offers backof-the-house tours to guests toshowcase sustainability efforts.Other initiatives include planta-tree programs, electric carts,biogas production to reduce theuse of propane, and a “dock-todish” pilot program connectinglocal fishermen with chefs tosave ocean species.A N D R E A B O N I L L A ’ 97HAN S P F I STE R ’ 9 6 ,a privatewealth advisor at Merrill Lynch,was named to Forbes’s firstlist of America’s Top MillennialAdvisors, ranking 31 out of 500on the list. Dunn is a principalof the Dunn Group, a wealthmanagement team within thePrivate Banking and InvestmentGroup at the company, which hejoined in 2008 as a trainee inwealth management. He beganhis career as a restaurant andbeverage manager at the ChinaGrill in the Mandalay Bay Hoteland Casino in Las Vegas.JACO B D U N N ’ 0 6 ,PETE R YESAWICH ’ 72 , MS ’ 74 , PH D ’ 76 was honored on March 1as the recipient of the Destination and Travel Foundation’s Spiritof Hospitality Award. The annual award recognizes exceptionaldedication and commitment to the travel and tourism industry.Yesawich, a partner and vice chairman of MMGY Global, theleading integrated travel and marketing firm in the United States,is an oft-cited expert and frequent major-media commentator onthe habits and preferences of American travelers. He has receiveda number of other significant awards and recognitions during his40-plus-year career in hospitality, including the World Travel Awardfrom the American Association of Travel Editors, the Koehl Awardfrom the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International(HSMAI), the Silver Medal from the American AdvertisingFederation, a place on HSMAI’s list of 25 Most ExtraordinaryMarketing Minds, and listing in Who’s Who in America.FA L L 2 0 1 77

A LU M N I N E W SR E D A L L OV E Rc a m p u s n o ta b l e sS H E RY L K I M E S , professor of services operations management,was presented with the Hospitality Sales and Marketing AssociationInternational’s Vanguard Award for Lifetime Achievement inRevenue Management at the organization’s Revenue OptimizationConference Americas on June 28. The award honors trueinnovators in the field of pricing and revenue optimization in thehospitality industry who have made substantive, enduring con tributions to the betterment of the revenue management profession.Through her research, Kimes is credited with defining andestablishing the business practice of hotel revenue management.At Cornell, she was named a Menschel Distinguished TeachingFellow in 2014; she is also a visiting professor of decision sciencesat the National University of Singapore School of Business.8H OT E L I EH E ATH E R KO L A KOWS K I ’ 0 0,JAC KKAPP’ 1 7,a lecturer in food andbeverage management and thefaculty advisor to Hotel EzraCornell, was awarded one ofCornell’s two 2017 KaplanFamily Distinguished FacultyFellowships in April for herdedication to service learning.The Kaplan Award will allowher students in Hunger, Health,and Nonprofit Social Enterpriseto create a long-term projectwith the Food Bank of theSouthern Tier. The class, whichKolakowski said was inspired bythe work of former SHA fac u ltymember Therese O’Connor, willenhance students’ skills andpro ject management abilitieswhile addressing the socialchallenges of food insecurity.O’Connor, the 2004 KaplanFamily Faculty Fellow, taught acourse on hunger and housingissues for the poor.CAROLINA D E PAO LI ’ 17,TaraCIA ’ 02 ,HENRYOberoi ’18 (AAP), and G R ANTB E H N K E ’ 17 won this year’sIHIF Student Case Compe ti tion, held March 6 during theInternational Hotel InvestmentForum in Berlin. This year’steams were required to conducta financial analysis of a complexhotel deal on a fictional upperupscale property in Amsterdamand recommend an investmentapproach, from offer amountto exit strategy. The SHA teamwas coached by Daniel Quan,the Robert C. Baker Professor inReal Estate and Arthur Adler ’78and Karen Newman Adler ’78Director of the Center for RealEstate and Finance, with assis tance from faculty membersChekitan Dev, professor ofser v ices marketing, and AmyNewman, senior lecturer inman age ment communication.Runners-up in the competitionwere the Ecole hôtelière deLausanne and Hotelschool theHague.

R E D A L L OV E RIAN CH U ’ 19 has been selectedas this year’s recipient of the U.S.Travel Association’s MeredithTravel Marketing Scholarship.He won the national competitionwith an essay about the servicedominant logic theorem andhow it applies to the future oftourism marketing. His studiesare focused on finance andaccount ing with a minor in realestate. Chu interned in financeat Major Food Group lastsummer and has spent the fall2017 semester studying in Rome.The team of CAM E RON KR AN E’ 1 7, A R T U R O R I Q U E L M E ’ 1 9 ,and Mark Skoglund, SethUrbanek, and Marie GuidoMiner, who are all CALS grad uate students in viticulture andenology, won the Millesimecom petition hosted by the Ecolehôtelière de Lausanne on June 3.The team, which was coachedby Cheryl Stanley ’00, lecturerin food and beverage man age ment, made it to the finals inthird place, tied for first placein the final round, and then wonin an individual-eliminationtaste-off. This round was doublyblind, as the wines were servedin black glasses.A LU M N I N E W Sand WARNER HAZELL ’ 17won the ninth-annual Sciences Po International Tasting (SPIT),a blind tasting of wine and champagne held April 1 on the SciencesPo campus in Reims, France. The students competed againsteleven teams from ESSEC Business School, the Ecole hôtelièrede Lausanne, the University of Oxford, the Chinese Universityof Hong Kong, the University of Paris-Saclay, the Ecole NormaleSupérieure, the University of Saint Andrews, the Ecole PolytechniqueFédérale de Lausanne, the Université Panthéon-Assas, Agro ParisTech, and Emlyon Business School. The team was coached byCheryl Stanley.MATT GUARINI ’ 18, SARA DEWITT ’ 17,FA L L 2 0 1 79

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Dharmendra “D.J.” Rama, MMH ’96, president and chief executiveof Hotel Finance and Real Estate.officer of AURO Hotels, grew up at his family’s Sunset Motel inAlthough most had profession al AURO Hotels’ NorthCharleston MarriottPomona, California. Every night, while his classmates watched degrees or had owned businesses,television or played video games, he helped his mother clean rooms a lack of Western credentials limited their opportunitiesas his father picked up the truckers who, by contractual agreement, in most industries. One notable exception was the motelwould fill the beds. Today, at the Greenville, South Carolina industry, where properties had fallen into fore clo surecorporate headquarters of AURO, whose portfolio includes 40 as owners grappled with the triple whammy of aMarriott, Hilton, and Hyatt hotels, Rama displays photos from recession, high gas prices resulting from the 1973 Arabeach of the 90-plus motels and hotels his family has owned. “I don’t oil embargo, and grown children who had little interestwant to forget the past,” he said.in taking over their parents’ businesses. As the GujaratisFor thousands of immigrant families who, like Rama’s, ori ginated were seeking affordable enterprises to buy, the banksin the Indian state of Gujarat, the path to the American Dream were seeking buyers.led through roadside motels with such iconic mid-century namesThese properties, often in rural towns, satisfied theas the Sunset and the Starlite.Gujaratis’ quest for an entrepreneurial opportunity.Gujarat, a textile and gem-cutting center on India’s western They required a small capital outlay (typically aboutcoast along the Arabian Sea, has a culture that prizes commerce 5,000 dollars for a down payment, which could beand entrepreneurship. For centuries, its people had followed cobbled together with the help of family and friends)opportunity where it beckoned; oftentimes, that meant Africa. and provided a family residence at no additional cost.Starting in the 1950s and accelerating in the sixties and seventies, “Most of the time, the entire family—husband, wife,as civil unrest spread throughout the continent (Idi Amin expelled grown-up children, cousins—worked in the business,some 60,000 Indians from Uganda in 1972), many Gujaratis and they worked hard,” said Rohit Verma, dean ofemigrated from Africa and India to the United States. “They left external relations at the Cornell SC Johnson Collegefor a better life, both economically and in terms of the way they of Business and a Singapore Tourism Board Dis tin were treated,” said Jan deRoos, the Hotel School’s HVS Professor guished Professor in Asian Hospitality Management.14H OT E L I E

T H E AC C I D E N TA L H OT E L I E R SAs more people or resources were needed, ownerslooked to extended family and the Gujarati communityfor support. “The Gujarati hotel community ralliesaround each other,” said Binita Patel, MMH ’10,managing partner of HMB Hotels. “When a fellowhotel owner is in need, others help in any way theycan—providing financing, giving advice, or using theirextensive network to resolve the issue.”The Gujaratis were further aided by their cultureof hospitality. “In India, guests are revered when theycome to your home,” said Hasmukh P. “H.P.” Rama,D.J.’s uncle and AURO Hotels’ chairman of the board.“So, despite their lack of experience in the hotel business,despite their being accidental hoteliers, despite thecommunication challenges they faced, the first genera tion was able to successfully run hotels because theyhad always welcomed guests. This is our culture.”PAT H S TO T H E A M E R I C A N D R E A MWithin one generation, the Gujaratis expanded their purviewfrom low-cost independent motels to branded properties, fullservice hotels, and development and management companies. Astheir influence grew, they pushed franchisors to make “moreeconomically rational decisions, taking into account the needsnot only of hotel companies, which receive royalty fees based onrevenues, but also franchisees, who get whatever’s left aftereveryone else has been paid,” said deRoos. Their success sparkedits own term: the “Patel phenomenon” (“Patel” is a commonGujarat surname related to profession and caste). TheAsian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA), D.J. Rama, MMH ’96,of which H.P. Rama was the founding chairman, now president and chiefexecutive officer ofhas more than 16,000 members, predominantly AURO Hotels, andGujarati, who own some 23,000 properties—almost his uncle, H.P. Rama,AURO’s chairman ofone in every two hotels in the United States.the board. Photo by“Members of the first generation had limited resources Dave Burbank, Cornelland lacked access to wider networks within their adopted Marketing GroupFA L L 2 0 1 715

country,” Verma said. “In contrast, members of thesecond generation attended top universities, likeHyatt Regency inCornell, and are much better connected. They’re ableGreenville, SouthCarolina, the city whereto create businesses that are larger in size and scope,the company is basedand at a much higher level. They’re not just runninghotels—they’re creating REITs [real estate investment trusts] toinvest in hotels, and companies that manage multiple hotels.”Jay H. Shah ’90, chief executive officer of Hersha HospitalityTrust, a self-advised hospitality REIT, expects that trend to gainmomentum. “Among my generation, I’m seeing less entrepreneurismin the owner-operator area and a lot more development in privateequity and finance,” he said. “You’ll still have your entrepreneurswho go into restaurant hospitality and create a great chain ofrestaurants, or who own and operate a portfolio of hotels. Buthotel real estate finance, where there’s an ability to have impactat scale, appears to be the growing area of interest.”D.J. Rama, Binita Patel, and Jay H. Shah are just three ofthe dozens of second-generation members of Gujarati immigrantfamilies who attended the Hotel School before assumingleadership roles in their family businesses. One day soon, thethird generation will begin to make its mark—Rama’s son, Keval,The lobby of AURO’s16H OT E L I Eand Shah’s son, Avikar, are now SHA freshmen.Here are these three Hotelie families’ American stories.th e r a m a s a n d au r o h ote l sAURO Hotels is named for the three brothers whofounded it in 1973: J.P. (D.J.’s father and AURO’s vicechairman), H.P., and M.P.H.P. Rama came to the United States in 1969 topursue an MBA at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Hisintroduction to the hospitality industry was as a waiterfor a Howard Johnson’s restaurant in Manhattan;thirteen years later, he would own four Howard Johnsonmotels. His first motel, purchased with 8,000 dollars ofhis own and 22,000 dollars that he borrowed from familyand friends, was the Sunset. “I bought a motel before Ibought a car,” he recalled. Not knowing anything abouthotels, he convinced the seller to stay on for two weeksto train him. Next, he bought motels in Nashville andin Greenville, South Carolina and “foreclosed propertiesfrom banks that were undercapitalized, undermanaged,and undermarketed. That’s how we disproportionately

T H E AC C I D E N TA L H OT E L I E R Screated value in a short period of time,” said Rama, wholater shared some of his know-how with SHA studentsas an executive-in-residence at the school.AURO Hotels went on to buy franchises and buildproperties throughout the Southeast and in California,Chicago, and—more recently—India. As is true ofother Gujarati enterprises, D.J. Rama said, a key toAURO’s success was the owner-operator model—“thedomino effect of the brothers starting the business andthen adding value by reinventing the asset, affiliatingwith a stronger franchise brand, and operating thehotel efficiently.”In the late 1980s, after seeing billboards and motelmarquees advertising properties as “American-ownedand-operated,” H.P. Rama worked to establishAAHOA, both to counter bias and to raise Asians’stature within the industry by providing training forother “accidental hoteliers.” He served as foundingchairman from 1990 to 1993. Later, feeling the needto build bridges with the mainstream lodging industry,he became chairman of the American Hotel andLodging Association, which in 2016 honored him withits Lifetime Achievement Award.D.J. Rama worked for Holiday Inn Worldwide,Interstate Hotels, and the Marriott Corporation beforeentering Cornell’s MMH program. He recalls an AUROPAT H S TO T H E A M E R I C A N D R E A Mbenchmarking study that he conducted for a coursetaught by Cathy Enz, the Lewis G. Schaeneman, Jr. a b ov eMembers of D.J. Rama’sProfessor of Innovation and Dynamic Management family, from left:and a professor of strategy. “It required a lot of strategic brother-in-law Nileshthinking, and it provided a great road map,” he said, Patel, uncle H.P. Rama,cousin Kamal Rama,noting that, of the 40 hotels (with 7,024 rooms) that cousin Swati Patel,AURO now owns, just two are holdovers from back then. mother Laxmi Rama,Upon graduation, D.J. Rama joined AURO Hotels H.P.’s wife Gita Rama,Kamal’s wife Bindiyaand held a variety of management positions before Rama, and father J.P.assuming the presidency in 2012. Shortly thereafter, Rama, vice chairmanhe created the ONE (Outreach, Nurture, Encourage) of AURO Hotelsinitiative, a charitable-giving and volunteer arm of AUROfocused on poverty relief and education. He also has worked to developlifestyle hotels, focusing on “the little touches that create a competitordifferentiation in the marketplace.” Another point of differentiationcomes from the family nature of the business. “Our people reallyadmire the family culture that’s alive in the company,” he said.“They know we genuinely care. I think guests sense that, too.”D.J. Rama has maintained close ties to the Hotel School. Aformer board member of the Leland C. and Mary M. PillsburyInstitute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship, he currently serves onthe Dean’s Advisory Board and as president of the Cornell HotelSociety of South Carolina. In 2013, he received the Cornell MMHOutstanding Alumnus of the Year Award.The Rama family has had a lifelongleftSHA freshman Kevaldedication to education. In 2011, they foundedD. Rama ’21 withAURO University, in Surat, Gujarat, whosehis parents, Sapnaofferings include a school of hospitality man Rama and D.J. Rama,MMH ’96age ment. “An AURO degree prepares youFA L L 2 0 1 717

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T H E AC C I D E N TA L H OT E L I E R SPAT H S TO T H E A M E R I C A N D R E A Mnot just for a job; it prepares you for life,” said H.P.Rama in explaining the university’s value-basededucation. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary ofthe brothers’ firs

School of Hotel Administration Cornell SC Johnson College of Business 146 Statler Hall Ithaca, NY 14853-6902 sha.cornell.edu. JANUARY 15-25, 2018 and JUNE 11-21, 2018 . development of hospitality elements of Ten Trinity Square in London, a 430 million dollar hotel and residential project that