TravTalk India Online Magazine
The 2024 South India Hotels & Restaurants Association (SIHRA) convention in Visakhapatnam turned out to be a platform for not only discussing best practices among the hospitality community, but also made sure that the members learn the nuances to excel in terms of technology and sustainability initiatives.
TT Bureau
The annual convention of South India Hotels & Restaurants Association (SIHRA) was held from 19-21 January 2024 at the Novotel Visakhapatnam Varun Beach with theme ‘India Growth Story’. This was the first SIHRA convention in Vizag and had in attendance senior government officials, decision makers from hospitality industry and owners from several homegrown hotel chains in South India as well as members of the association. The convention recorded more than 400 delegates in three days full of in-depth discussions on various significant issues pertaining to the industry.
At the inauguration G. V. L. Narasimha Rao, Member of Rajya Sabha, addressed the gathering and asserted on the fact that there is a need for development of tourism in many tier II and III destinations across the region. Citing Ayodhya as a recent example, he said that destinations like Lepakshi in Andhra Pradesh can be developed for tourism and hotels and resorts can eventually come up at these locations. Talking on skill development, he added, “There is a need to take collective representation to create manpower in the hospitality industry. Also, heritage and convention tourism should be developed in other cities apart from metro cities.”
Venkatesan Dhattareyan, Regional Director, South, West & Central, Ministry of Tourism, Government of India, claimed that the convention is a knowledge sharing platform. “With a variety of discussions and a range of speakers at different sessions, the members get a broader perspective and best practices can be shared with a bigger audience, which are otherwise restricted to individuals. With five states and two UTs, the South India region, things are very different and varied at many places. I believe that skill development needs to be addressed in a big way with such a boom in domestic tourism. Hence, having trained manpower remains a big concern for hoteliers in both big and small cities. Thus, capacity building, skilling and training are very important currently.”
Speaking about the response of the 2024 convention, K Syama Raju, President, SIHRA, said that their idea was to make the convention better than the last one held in Bengaluru in 2023. “Vizag is a beautiful city with a number of beaches and people can invest money in this destination and build hotels, which would help the domestic as well as inbound tourism sector,” he commented.
Speaking about SIHRA’s activities, he said, “We are promoting a lot of tourism activities and liaising with the government for industry status, which we have achieved in Karnataka. Apart from that we are aggressively setting up laboratories for food safety in all the metro cities.”
