Northstar

16 | www.travelweekly-asia.com HOSPITALITY The occasion was the launch of the first Sage Hotel in Perth, Western Australia, but it was more significant than that for Singapore- based SilverNeedle Hospitality. It also marked the comeback of Anand Nadathur to the business he founded in 2009 based on his vision of combining scale with customisation in hotels. Nadathur is the younger son and director of the Nadathur Group, the private investment arm of NS Raghavan, co-founder of Infosys Technologies. His background is in tech – he's done a few tech startups and invested in several – and his family pedigree made him a natural for scale. And to help him on the customisation side, he brought in veteran hotelier Bill Black (Four Seasons, Fullerton track record). To create the foundation for SilverNeedle, he acquired Ativa Hospitality, a Bangkok-based boutique hotel management company, and Constellation Hotels, an Australian hospitality platform with more than 4,000 rooms, which today forms the base on which the group is building upon. He then left the business for three years and returned as CEO and chairman last December, and brought back Black as president – he was Anand's right-hand man ONE TALKS TECH, ONE TALKS PEOPLE in the early years and also left SilverNeedle after Anand stepped down. He believes it is the right time for him to make a comeback because of the disruption happening in the industry – a new generation of travellers, blurring of spaces, the boom in private accommodation, a middle class in Asia Pacific ready to travel, among the forces at work. Nadathur, who is responsible for the wealth management and strategic direction of group assets of Nadathur Group, chose hospitality, investing US$100 million out of the group's US$1 billion fund into it, "because I felt a lot of the hotel experiences were not for someone like me". "In the context of the current generation of travellers, it is important hospitality transforms," he said. He believes hospitality is grounded in the traditional real estate business. It is room- and product-centric, yet in the age of the connected traveller, the global citizen, values have changed and SilverNeedle aims to align itself with those values and needs. It's an interesting combination – Nadathur and Black. One talks tech, one talks people - yet the two are so fundamentally infused, like yin and yang, and if they can figure a way to bring their two worlds together, it could be the perfect recipe for a hospitality company rooted in service and tech for a new generation. Said Black, "I've been a hotelier for 32 years, mostly in Asia/Pacific. When I first met Anand, you can imagine the kind of conversation we had. He would question my In the age of the connected traveller, values have changed, and SilverNeedle aims to align itself with those values and needs. Can SilverNeedle's odd couple bring their two worlds together? business – and it forced me to rethink our business. "I learnt to accept the questions and not give an answer right away – I said, I'll come back to you. There is no doubt our industry is changing, customers are changing, and the industry has to change. "There is a revolution going on, and hotels have become commodities. The passion and personal are being replaced by hard facts and commerce – we don't want that to happen. We want to look at it with fresh eyes." As such, with the Sage brand, three core values underpin it – celebrating local, connectivity and people. "I know it's age-old – people," said Black, "but our employees are changing too, and we have to change with them. Our local employees are ambassadors to their city, this is an important distinction." Lines are blurring, "why should we in hospitality create boundaries?" But beyond Sage, Nadathur as CEO has a bigger goal. Yes, he needs to grow the company, which has 55 hotels in Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Laos and Sri Lanka, under the brands of NEXT, SAGE, Chifley and Country Comfort, but he also wants to disrupt hospitality. "We have to keep testing, keep coming up with ideas. It's not failure that's the problem, it's the lack of testing," said Nadathur. "Let's try 10 different ideas and see what works." The first Sage Hotel in Perth, Western Australia. By Yeoh Siew Hoon Left: Anan Nadathur, director of the Nadathur Group; Right: Bill Black, president of SilverNeedle Hospitality.

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