The Rise of the Patel Motel Empire: How One Community Redefined American Hospitality
In this week's The Core Report: The Weekend Edition, Govindraj Ethiraj speaks with Amar Shah, a multiple Emmy-winning writer and producer, and Rahul Rohatgi, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer and director, to discuss how Gujarati grit built America’s most unexpected hospitality dynasty.
NOTE: This transcript contains the host's monologue and includes interview transcripts by a machine. Human eyes have gone through the script but there might still be errors in some of the text, so please refer to the audio in case you need to clarify any part. If you want to get in touch regarding any feedback, you can drop us a message on [email protected].
Hi, and welcome to the Core Reports Weekend Edition. In this edition, we're going to take a little trip to the United States and stay in one of the motels there. Now, Indians control more than 60% of all hotels and motels in the United States.
Now, we do know that intuitively, but maybe not that number, and that range is actually quite broad. It may be a very simple motel, and it could be something as plush as the Four Seasons. So the interesting thing is there's a film that's now coming out on this, which is based on a book that was written a little while ago, and that film tries to capture the sense of the Patels who run the motels.
And what I'm trying to do or will try and do in this conversation that will follow is to bring out some of those elements through the eyes of the filmmakers, who are both residents of the United States and television producers, as it happens, and try and see how their story came about, and secondly, the story of the Patels of the motels in the United States. So to do all of this, I'm joined by Amar Shah and Rahul Rohatgi. Amar is a multiple Emmy-winning writer and producer and has worked for more than 20 years, including at ESPN, Fox Sports, and NFL Network.
Rahul is also an Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer and director, and has covered events like the Super Bowl and worked on stories beyond the headlines, and both of them have worked in the sports space. So thank you both for joining me. And let me start off by asking you, Amar, what made you think of this theme, which is the Patels of the motels?
Amar Shah
Govind, thanks again. This story has been with me my entire life. My dad is from Gujarat originally, and he came in the late 60s as a student to study here, and he ended up getting a degree in electrical engineering, but his Gujarati entrepreneurial mindset always wanted him to kind of be his own boss, and so he bought a convenience store.
And my entire life, you know, my entire childhood was based in the world of gas stations and convenience stores, and I always like to say that I was a counter kid. So I grew up sort of behind the counter, and that's the way that I saw the lens of the world. And, you know, I always knew that the world of gas stations, simultaneously, friends and family were also in the motel and hotel business.
So the Econo Lodges, the Days Inn, those are all the places that I spent my childhood kind of hanging out with. And, you know, it was part of my childhood, so it was ingrained. But little did I know that the business would sort of like take off the way that I did.
I went down the world of sports media, but my friends and other family members kind of stayed in the business. And what I noticed was that a lot of Indians own motels, and then I found the numbers out, like there was a New York Times article back in the late 90s that called it the Patel Motel Cartel. And those numbers just grew and grew.
And I would say about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a book called Behind the Lobby, and it was about the study of how South Asians really dominated the industry. But, you know, as I dug a little bit further, I knew there was a huge story here. There was an untold entrepreneurial and immigrant story.
And so that's where sort of the seeds began to get planted. And I would say around the time of the pandemic, I was talking with one of our producers, Milan Chakraborty on Twitter, and we just kind of like came up with this idea of like, let's make this thing happen, because we all knew about it, but nobody actually knew about the story behind it. So then me and Rahul connected, we've always been friends and always wanted to work together and sort of brought him on board.
And we joined another producer named Sanjay Sharma, and we ended up shooting a film, a reel, a sizzle reel in Dallas during the heart of the pandemic at the AHOA conference. And I'll kind of like Rahul kind of take over from here.
Rahul Rohatgi
No, just, you know, AHOA is the Asian American Hotel Owners Association of America. So it's one of the largest conferences of its type. And it was very eye opening when we, you see, you know, the thousands and thousands of South Asians running, like you said, Govind, these motels and hotels of all different sizes and also just generationally, you would see people who are in their 20s, all the way to uncles, you know, and aunties in their 70s, 80s.
And they all had various, they all had different stories to tell about their family's origin in the business. But many of them, and that's what sort of intrigued us, many of them had traced their starts back to, you know, previous to the 1960s and 50s. And that just got the journalists and filmmakers and Amar and I very interested in uncovering, like, how did this all begin, you know, and how did it get from where it began to where it is now?
So that was the that was sort of the inspiration for us to sort of make this film in the first place.
Amar Shah
Yeah, I would also, sorry, go ahead. I would also chime in to say that we initially thought that the story started when in 1965, after the Immigration Act and or after a lot of the Gujaratis and Indians came from Uganda to the United States. But as we sort of discovered the roots of this story, go back another generation.
And I think that was an incredible mystery to solve.
And what was that? What was that mystery?
Amar Shah
It well, we kept finding a name, Kanji Monshu Desai, and it was a name that started with that initial New York Times magazine article. And there was this little anecdote that he bought the first or ran the first motel in like San Francisco, the Sacramento area. So in northern California.
But there was no. There was nobody knew anything about it, aside of the fact that he acquired it from a Japanese-American woman. And I think for us, discovering the story behind that or getting to know Kanji Monshu Desai over these last few years in terms of his storyline, that was one of the most incredible, I think, narratives that we discovered along the process.
So I'm going to come back to the present, but let's talk about Kanji Desai for a little more. So he bought this hotel and started running it. But what caused it to grow from there on? Not just him, but even the whole phenomenon.
OK, so really for him, the roots of the whole thing were even how he acquired his first lease in the first place. Right. So he had started as a labour, a farm labour in the United States alongside many other Gujaratis.
These were men in their 20s, 30s, even 40s, backbreaking hard labour in the sun. That that that did not faze them, the idea of working hard. But he obviously wanted to do something that was not as physically taxing.
And so when the opportunity came to get this hotel, he really ran it as as many did since. But he really did this model of running it very streamlined. Right.
The room, many of the rooms went to, he attracted fellow labourers, said, listen, come stay in the hotel. I won't even charge you at that point in the 1940s. I won't charge you the 10 cents a day or anything.
You stay. When you have your day off, you come, you clean the bathrooms, you help make me, you know, you help me in the housekeeping and all those things. And that was really the start.
That was how he made that work for him financially. And then he's told he told the others, you can do the same thing. Right.
If you can save your money. So he would start. So basically, his expansion was he and others would write letters back to the friends and family they knew in Gujarat.
They listen. You can get yourself to America. Come to California.
We will set you up. We will give you the first loans you need. You come, you work in the farms, you save your money, you stay here.
And once you have enough, we'll give you a loan to get you your first lease. And that was sort of the beginning seeds of the expansion.
And all of this happened in the 1940s or it started happening in the 1940s.
Amar Shah
Yeah, I would. So you have to understand that Kanji Monshu Desai and there's another man by the name of D.Lal and then Nandan Lal Patel. They were sort of like the three main names that helped generate this entire phenomenon.
They were all undocumented illegal immigrants in this country. As Rahul mentioned, they worked as fruit and farm labourers in California. They you know, and these are long backbreaking time periods.
And I think that allowed, you know, so they had a community that they were building. And that was sort of how it all how it all began. And then I think Rahul kind of touched on the fact that Kanji Monshu had a lot of health issues.
And so his thing was, you know, bringing in you know, all these different people reaching out because we talked to so many people who had relatives and had original letters, you know, that they had that Kanji Monshu wrote to them. And this also started when America started opening up its own doors to allow immigrants to legally come through. So they called them the lottery winners.
And that was like a group of like twenty five to fifty Indians. And so that's when that next generation, the Kanji Monshu started, were able to come to this country and he helped sort of set them up.
Rahul Rohatgi
So a lot of your, Govind, to answer your question about the timing. So Kanji Monshu Desai, he started in the 40s, but a lot of the first Patels who came over and were able to get his help came in in the 50s, right, post World War II, post independence. Once the sort of framework of immigration from India was starting to loosen up in the United States.
And then it really exploded in the 1960s once that first generation was set and the Immigration and Nationality Act was passed in that case, which allowed for a lot more immigration from India.
So all these young men, mostly, I'm assuming, working in this hotel in California, which is in a way a surprise because somehow I thought maybe sitting here that it would have all started in the East Coast, but clearly not. And then did they spread all over the country or how did that expansion happen?
Rahul Rohatgi
Yeah, so the expansion happens exactly like you said, so it did start, as we found in California, because there was already a concentration and an establishment there. But like all immigration has happened since the opportunity, the entrepreneurial spirit took over, right? So at some point somebody says, OK, I want to I'll come over.
But we've saturated this area. Where else can I go? Where else are there to be?
So I'm we're we are still in the process of researching if it was exactly a straightforward. I don't think it was a straightforward West-East expansion, but it just attracted everybody who had already come brought more over. Right.
You'd bring your you'd bring your eventually you'd bring your wife and children over. You bring your bisab over. You bring everybody over.
And then where where can you go? And really, it was at the same time there was a generation of largely white Americans who were getting out of the business. Right.
They were selling off and they were they're moving out. So it really expanded into places where there was economic opportunity, wherever that would be. I think like I think many of your listeners probably know, like Indians will go everywhere, anywhere that there is opportunity.
And so it wasn't it wasn't planned or straightforward. It just sort of organically happened.
Amar Shah
And what was really interesting, and I'm going to kind of talk a little bit further with the handshake loan. Right. This is a very old school methodology of doing business.
And I think that first generation, it wasn't about, oh, I'll loan you money if you know at this percentage rate. They all you know, they all paid each other back and it was all based on the reputation. So if you didn't pay that loan back, your reputation in the community would be diminished.
And I think that was more of a more of a caveat to pay back that loan than anything else. And so it was this form of like transactional business manoeuvring that allowed, I think, many of them to come through and kind of keep it within the community and also build at the same time. So it wasn't like I'm only going to have my my fiefdom.
I'm going to expand it further. And I think that was something that Kanchi Manchu really helped develop was this ability to kind of expand the community. Ironically, he didn't get a chance to kind of enjoy the fruits of his own labour because, you know, he was also a very Shakespearean character, but that that's kind of like the beautiful arc of this story is that it's a very human one at that, too.
And what happened to him?
Amar Shah
Rahul, should I kind of tell that sad story?
Rahul Rastogi
I don't know. I mean, I feel like I want people to watch the movie, though, to find out what happened to him.
But I think Amar mentioned he himself was.
But it's a tragic end.
Rahul Rohatgi
Well, you know, tragic is, I think, I think it's it's not the ending that you would hope for somebody in a business story. Right. You want the story to be like this person founded something, started something.
And that is now his family generations on are the legacy of that. His his personally, he was not the best business person. And I don't think he was the most financially or fiscally responsible on his own.
And also his immigration status eventually ended up catching up to him in a way that because of how he initially had come into the United States and that did that did cause problems for him. So he had not he had not really been able to establish himself as like many of his other contemporaries took that hotel business and were able to expand themselves. Right.
And he just had I think maybe we kind of talked about a little bit, but his generosity maybe undid him a little bit because he didn't really have the ability to then expand it to many others. But he had the vision to at least know how to start.
Amar Shah
What was fascinating about him as a flawed human being was that, you know, he had vices. And I think in some ways those vices caught up with him in terms of being an alcoholic. I think that hurt and diminished his stature as a businessman.
And because, I mean, you think about the the. The sad narrative, right, like you end up getting kicked out of a country that you helped and you weren't able to kind of like get the riches that you helped everybody set up. And so what stinks is that he wasn't able to to kind of reap those rewards.
But at the same time, I think his memory and what he created for everybody else lives past him. And in a sense, that outlast his legacy far outweigh the contributions he made even when he was alive.
So I think you've touched upon this, but I guess two sort of questions, one supplemental to the other. So first is so Kanji was a Desai. So how did the whole Patel revolution start and how is it that it remained confined to the Gujarati community? I mean, I'm not I'm sure it's not fully confined, but let's say considerably confined to that community for so many years.
Amar Shah
Well, you know, Mahendra Doshi was the historian who wrote this book. And he was like an Indian uncle who spent like seven years working on this as a side project. So, you know, I got to give a lot of credit to him. But when we kind of threw him the question about, you know, is Desai is actually a form of Patel, you know, and, you know, being married to a half Patel, you know, there are a lot of different Patels there's and they changed their last name, but they're all Patels.
Right. They're all from one certain area of Gujarat. And which is near what they call the Cholgam area of like the five different towns around.
I forgot all of their names, but they're all in that central area. My family is from Nadiad, so we're a little bit distanced. But, you know, I do have some roots in that in that in that town period.
But you were saying why it's stuck in the Gujarati community. I think there's a certain, you know, all of us Indians have or Indian-Americans or diaspora have a certain characteristics to us. And I think that entrepreneurial edge with Gujaratis has always been there.
And I think that spirit travelled with them no matter where in the world they go, whether it was in Africa or in America. And it ended up just becoming this way for them to find their, you know, they call it riches in the niches. And I think they found that niche in the motel and hotel space.
And it just kind of expanded further. And if you go to like in a conference, you know, you throw a stone, you're bound to hit a patel or two or five or 10. You know, I would say it's a family reunion more than it is anything else.
Rahul Rohatgi
I also don't think Govind, I mean, I think since you're, you know, you're talking about, you know, you're doing economics and finance podcast, I think most of your listeners would appreciate it's not a it's not a lucrative, straightforward, lucrative business. I think I don't think it's I don't think it like, you know, many, many Indians who moved to the United States later were obviously attracted by the opportunity to do medicine, engineering, technology, those things people understand are inherently, you know, potentially lucrative in a way that this wasn't. So really, the people who were attracted, I mean, to come here, were coming here because they are somebody told them to come.
You know, this is the only way you're going to really start here. There are very few Gujrati’s who came just of their own accord looking to start a hotel. They all came because somebody sort of sent for them and said, listen, if you come here, we will set you up.
And like just like Amar's father, like their backgrounds in India had nothing to do with hospitality or hotels or any of those things. They were doing whatever they did. And that's why it was that's why it was more widespread in that community versus people were not necessarily initially calling for anybody who comes here can get a hotel.
That wasn't the case. You needed the infrastructure that they had set up in terms of the financing and the ability for somebody to vouch for you in the first place and sort of get going.
Amar Shah
Oh, what I was saying, it's also the perfect business model, right? You you buy the motel, you live there, you work there, you're able I mean, so they were able to live, live cheaply. Save money and expand, and so it was the and I think that model for for as a fellow Gujarati, you know, you know, it's always been about, you know, getting a good deal, especially with, you know, parents, they love to like, you know, so it's in the blood.
It's in the bloodstream, right? To this model fit that exact archetype of who we were as a people in a very anecdotal way.
So I'm going to come back to the business model in a second, but the Asian American Hotel Association that you speak of has about thirty three thousand hotels and motels. So is that the number of members or is it the actual number of properties?
Rahul Rohatgi
Members, members, yeah, and there are many and there are many people who do not belong to a who who run and own hotels and motels.
Right, OK, so let me come back to the business model that you that you've touched upon. So if you were to go a little deeper into that, so you said that, you know, one is the fact that they actually live there and work there brings down costs. And obviously there is more ownership, a sense of ownership and a continuous monitoring of what's going on and so on.
But what else distinguishes this model of hospitality from other models of hospitality?
Amar Shah
It stayed within the family. Right. And I think that the ability to kind of like bring in your brother in law, bring in your brother or your your uncle or your aunt and then kind of keep it within the confines, allow them to kind of expand further and also, you know, not have the I would say, and Rahul, please chime in here, had the burden of financially of like having like they were able to keep the loans within themselves in certain ways.
Rahul Rohatgi
Yeah, just the business model is just very streamlined. Right. I mean, now, obviously, it's much different, but many of the owners we talked to who had started in the 50s, 60s, 70s, they didn't have staff.
Right. They were they they ran just just like the Kanji by model. They ran not only do they live there, but they did all the front desk.
They did all the cleaning. They did all the upkeep. So it really just kept their labour costs down, which allowed them to be competitive.
Right. There was a we we discussed that there's an there eventually due to the success of the community at large, there does become elements of racism in play in terms of even the people in this country not wanting to stay at hotels that were owned by Indians or looking for American owned hotels. So the only way they could really make it work was to compete economically.
And for the hotel business, you need people to you need occupancy. You know, you need the rates to stay at a certain level and you need to keep costs down. Again, that model shifts as they get more, I guess, as success breeds, because eventually they could own their own real estate, which was a different play.
But initially, you know, you're usually leasing the land, which means you've already potentially got debt off to pay. And eventually, as you expand, you also do can start taking these bank loans, which create more pressure than maybe simply the handshake loans of generation before. So it was always about sort of how do we keep certain costs down while keeping quality up?
And like Amr said, you turn to family.
And if I were to ask you to talk about the evolution now, so we've started, let's say, between the 40s and the 60s, that's the 1940s and 60s. And as we move to, let's say, the latter part of that century and into this one, I'm sure obviously the number of motels grew. I can also sense that going by some of the examples, including some that I've encountered, that there is a progression, as in clearly some have moved to premium brands and partnering with premium brands and so on.
So walk us through that whole phase of evolution and change and growth.
Amar Shah
I'll start there. I think the franchise model really had a lot to do with it. And I think initially bigger brands didn't see these mom and pops as anything big.
And then all of a sudden they started expanding and saw that the word Classie and Patel and other Indian surnames were everywhere. And I think that's when they started getting involved and giving, I would say, the next generation the uplift from like mom and pop to these organised business structures. Right now, it's full hospitality empires.
It's not just your one or two hotels in your portfolio. These are legitimate, expanded businesses that have names like Marriott and Hilton are not even as big as like Patel in this game anymore. And I think with the natural expansion of immigration and, like I said before, allowing different family members to come in and to work.
So it just ended up feeding itself. It was a ball that kept going down the hill and acquiring more snow along the way.
Rahul Rohatgi
Yeah. In terms of the franchise model, it did take, again, most of the hotels and motels we talked about that were in the origin phase were independent. And often these larger franchise companies were not interested in working with Patels based on either a sense of racism, a sense of classism, a sense of how would they, you know, it was a decent model.
But some did. And those, again, by word of mouth, you know, there was the Howard Johnson's, the Hamptons. It did spread enough that they were considered, you know, good businesses.
But also what we also learned talking to a lot of people, especially at AHOA, was once these larger brands saw the way the Patel community would operate their hotels and would operate them with the quality and with the reliability, you know, that opened up the doors and opportunities. Now, the next generation, the kids who grew up in our time where, you know, I'm and I both in our 40s, so we're kids of the 80s, 90s, they are not interested in the business. And many of them, like us, they went off to have education.
They might be interested in something else. But interestingly, we would see them at AHOA and we said, wait, I thought you said that you went off to college to study engineering or law or medicine or whatever. They said, sure.
But we came back. You know why? Because there's something in their blood about, Amar said, being entrepreneurial.
So they don't look at it. They don't they don't want to they never wanted to operate in the space that their parents did of just subsistence execution. It was always about, can we expand?
Can we create passive income? Right. So they own they don't live at the hotel.
They own multiple properties. They hire professional staff and they have professional vendors. This is for them, again, real estate ventures and expansion opportunities.
That's the generation that really got into it, that has now created what has existed. They just took they took the start of their parents and they created like they had a vision. And I mean, at this point, I mean, I think even at AHOA, we met several people who would call themselves billionaires just from just from just from this from this business.
Amar Shah
I mean, talk about humble beginnings to, you know, basically billionaires who now create banks for themselves. It's, you know, the portfolios that some of these people have created for their families is, I mean, it's mind blowing. And I think every time we go to AHOA, we end up meeting like an entire new generation of, you know, Patel motel kids whose parents and grandparents, you know, had those sort of like, you know, lived in the motel.
And now they're all living, you know, five star lives, you know, you know, going from, you know, and now owning professional sports teams. It's an incredible economic story about where they came from. And in 50 years, think about it, from two generations, one was able to set forth as the precedent and how that next generation built it.
I wish I had somehow done it myself, but, you know, I get to tell the story, Rahul.
Right. And when you talk to some of these people, I mean, do you feel that, you know, they, I mean, they are now, as you said, second generation and third generation. And do they, I mean, I have two questions here.
So one is, they continue to co-exist or they co-exist with the original Patel motel format, I'm assuming, because obviously not everyone will have that ability to become big and so on. And secondly, what do they call themselves? Do they call themselves hoteliers or hospitality industry professionals or, or something else?
Amar Shah
What's that great term that we heard? Accidental hoteliers. I think one of the, one of the guys that we interviewed had that line. And for a, for a while we thought that would be a great title for the film. But, I think there, that generation looks at themselves as sort of expand.
And a lot of them don't realise the roots of how it all happened. And I think for us to tell that story kind of gives them a good remembrance of the sacrifices that their parents and that generation made so that they can live the life that they live. Yeah.
Rahul Rohatgi
I think a lot of them consider themselves, you know, you know, they call themselves businessmen or business people. I mean, hoteliers is not a term that they, I guess, prefer. I think it is more real estate, you know, venture capitalists.
You know, they're in their, I mean, in their minds, a lot of what they're doing now is putting together the deals that operate, you know, bundling up these, these properties that their parents and their generation for them may have acquired and kind of leveraging them for expansion purposes or upgrades, you know, trying to, trying to build what they already have into more upscale, you know, properties.
So yeah, I mean, it is more hospitality if that's the term, which is a more catch all, catch all and marketable term.
And, and tell us about the role of women. You know, I know, I mean, from the, I mean, the few examples that I've seen that women have tended to play a fairly important role in the early days.
Maybe not in the first, in the first group of entrepreneurs we spoke about in San Francisco, but maybe in subsequent years and how they've played from, I mean, this is from your interviews. I mean, I don't, I don't want to project what I've seen from your interviews about how they've played a role and families have played a role in, in the, in this growth and metamorphosis.
Amar Shah
Govind, I really appreciate that question. When we started filming in Ohoa, we met a woman named Jyoti Sarolia, who was a second or third generation hotelier. So it was like her, her father, her great uncle was the one who kind of like came with that generation of Kanji Monshu Desai.
And you should see the, the, and it's an amazing story because I think that first generation of women that came there, we actually, her great aunt is one of the oldest living female hoteliers. She's probably in her nineties now. She's like a, she's like a ba, right?
She's a grandmother. She was, she, they came there, they supported their husbands. Actually, they're the ones who kind of ran the show behind the scenes, even though it was a very, there was a certain degree of patriarchy.
Don't get me wrong, right? We come from a conservative Gujarati culture, but the, I think the precedent that they laid at that generation, cause they had to juggle between doing like actually operating the motels along with their husbands and also being, you know, mothers and wives and having to make the food. And so I think that generation really like put forward that precedent that now those daughters and granddaughters are building things even further.
They're the true sort of leaders now. Like Jyoti is a full-fledged businesswoman. Her and her mom operate their hotels.
Like they are, they are dons. And it's, it's, it's an amazing thing to see because that was a story that when you first watched the film, you'll be able to see that it's these mother and daughter combination has expanded this motel empire into something even bigger than it was when it started.
So, you know, when you fast forward to today, do you see the same structures? I mean, I know I've sort of touched upon this earlier as well. When we talk about, you know, what, how are the families today?
You know, because earlier, I guess you had more joint families running it. And I'm guessing in progression of time, joint families tend to split up. But do you see that, did you, do you see that, or did you see that happening here as well, or have these families held together more than perhaps in other cases?
Rahul Rohatgi
I don't know about more than other cases, but even in our interviews and research with families that are still in the business, it's just, it's just so, it's just so widespread. There's, there are still plenty of them at the sort of quote unquote bottom, right? Who are running independent motels with their families newer to this country, though there's less and less of that, but they still exist and struggling to see if they can, you know, make a living in the industry.
But there are so many, I mean, again, even at Hoa's numbers show there, there are so many that are just multi-generational empires at this point. And we even ran into, it doesn't seem like, I mean, I don't really have any way of verifying this unless there's any good numbers out there, but for many of the people that we saw that were our generation and younger, who are running, they still tended to be part of their family's empire. They may have done a separate business structure for various reasons to cut things off or separate out entities or something like that.
But for the most part, they were all still part of the same structure. Again, I can't speak to that specifically because I'm sure people we met may have had different LLCs set up differently, again, for different properties and stuff, but they tended to all be, and many were still living in the same areas that their parents lived in and they just had a different, they ran some of them and their parents ran the others.
Amar Shah
I mean, look, the joint family structure is a cultural component to who we are, right? So when you have a business, they're going to probably have disagreements between each other, but I think the business ends up keeping people together. But you can also see where different families have totally different strains of the business now, right?
Something may have happened where two brothers decide to operate on their own and they both have successful ventures. I mean, it's kind of part of the business model. And I think also one of the things that we're going to show, our goal is to make a feature out of this short documentary.
And the next expansion of this is showing that it's not all billionaire success, right? We know as of late, unfortunately, it's a very dangerous business, right? Where there's been plenty of Gujaratis that have been shot and killed operating a motel and especially as of late.
And I think the goal is to show that, yeah, there's incredible success, but there's incredible danger. And it's still all going on simultaneously, different forms of the process. Not everyone is where we want them to be or where they want to be, but they've got to start somewhere.
And I think that's the whole part of this storyline is that some people's beginnings are starting now, where some people are two or three generations ahead. And I think that's the beauty of the entire storyline of where we're trying to get to.
And what is the sense that you got when you spoke to all these people across generations? So this is a 70 to 80-year-old story now. Is it somewhere halfway?
Is it at a sort of peak and plateau? From here on, things will continue to move, but we may not see the kind of growth we saw all these years in the past and also driven by, I guess, generational choices and all that, and the environment outside. And we'll come to that as well.
Rahul Rohatgi
I think it was interesting that Amar and I started this project on the heels of the COVID pandemic, because for many people we talked about, that has been a really sea change in how they operated and really created so many issues for them in terms... It's a very, you know, the margins in this business are not great. And depending on how well-capitalised you were, COVID really created a lot of issues for a lot of these companies.
So we talked to people for whom, you know, as the years went by, it has gone since, some have survived and they've been able to take advantage of the economic rebound. And, you know, now there's a lot more uncertainty, especially in this country with immigration rules and, you know, just a general sense of, you know, the economic outlook in this country. But for many, COVID was also just like a real downturn that from which they are still trying to recover.
They lost properties. They lost, you know, they had... Properties went into foreclosure.
So I don't think that this is necessarily like the peak of the story. However, there is a sense that it probably... You know, Amar, I mean, we can differ on this too.
I think because of all the other opportunities there are now for South Asians in this country, it's not going to be, you know, top of mind. I think, you know, there are so many... I mean, just even...
I mean, India as a country is so much richer, so much more educated than in the 50s and 60s. There's so many more opportunities there that if you're coming here and you're getting into this industry now, it's either out of necessity or because it's something you actually know and study. I mean, there are plenty of investors we've met who have already started their properties and careers in India and are now looking to expand here and vice versa.
Right. I mean, we met people, Amar, who, you know, who had started their, you know, they were second generation in America, but now they were trying to expand and, you know, see if they could make inroads in India. They're like, oh, that's where the money is.
Yeah. That's where the money is, you know, and we already have the language and the connections.
Amar Shah
I think what's incredible about this story is, yes, I do think that it's going to expand on, but in different levels, as Rahul said, it may not be building properties in the United States, but it might be a worldwide phenomenon. So whereas this was a really an American story, I think the way that it expands is going to be global. I think right now in the country, sometimes the pendulum swings of where we look for success, right?
There's a lot of anti-immigrant fervour going on in our country right now. And even if you go on social media and the story and where it's presented, there's a lot of like, oh, you know, they did all these like nefarious and illegal things in order to acquire these properties, they've abused the system. There's a lot of that sort of nativist anger when people see success.
But I think the bigger story here is that most people don't see it that way. Most, the majority sees it as why immigration in this country is a beautiful thing. And I think that that's the part of the storyline is that, you know, success happens because this American dream allowed it to, when you work hard, you pay your dues, and this is sort of like the success you have, but at the same time, we're all at different stages of where that dream is.
And you, I mean, since you've touched upon anti-immigration fervour, and obviously this is a different America now, and we can see it and read about it, even as we speak, how is that affected or is, how is that affecting these kinds of businesses? I mean, we're not talking about Wall Street professionals or Silicon Valley, you know, geeks and so on. I mean, you know, we're talking about people, as you said, it's a dangerous business, you're exposed, and there is daily risk.
Rahul Rohatgi
Rahul, go ahead. Oh, sorry. Yeah, I think there is, that's an interesting question, Govind, because the way it's been most noticeable, again, just from like a business standpoint, is not necessarily the anti-immigration fervour, or not even fervour, just the undercurrent that existed, because everything is cyclical.
The reason that, you know, I mean, our story, the story starts at a time when there was real anti-immigration fervour, literally, in this country where Indians, you know, South Asians weren't even allowed to legally immigrate here for the most part. So that's obviously not the case anymore. And the issue has been mostly recently, honestly, for the hotel, for the hotel users, and not just obviously the South Asians, is the sense that this country is not open to visitors and immigrants, right?
Because many times when you first come to this country, if you're a traveller, you're staying in a hotel. If you're an immigrant, and you first need to find a place to live, you might stay at a long-stay independent motel. So even just the business side of things, when you hear statistics about how tourism and those kinds of things are down in the United States, you have to remember that it disproportionately affects the South Asians, because they run most of the motels, and that is a negative, that is a negative correlation for South Asians in this country.
So I think it's less necessarily about whether there's opportunity and labour supply, because again, I don't know how many Indians are still coming to this country for the purposes of immigrating to run and operate motels. I think, like you said, a lot of it now is in either the sort of unskilled or very skilled labour, but it is, it will be interesting to see how, if the country continues to, you know, retract economically, right, so your discretionary dollar goes away for the business, and as well as their other overseas tourism. Again, a lot of these businesses don't operate with the heavy cushions.
So when the thing contracts, they go out of business, and the next generation doesn't want to then go into business. In terms of like, but Amar, yeah, you should speak to some of the stuff we have been reading about in terms of how anti-immigrant fervour has affected the community in terms of specifically, I think, violence and racism.
Amar Shah
You know, it's one of those things that I think, you know, you mentioned that the pendulum swings, right? I remember the anti, the South Asian anti-fervour that was going on post 9-11, right, where people couldn't decipher anything, right, and if you had a turban on, if you had brown skin, you were looked at differently, and so, you know, then that kind of goes away because someone else is like, you know, in our crosshairs, so this country has a tendency to do that, right, and I think right now, we're in an environment where we're in a weird time period right now, right, because we have key South Asian involvement politically in all parts of the spectrum, and so our identity is, you know, is always, you know, are we American enough, and I think with what we're, and it's a constant proof of concept in a way that, you know, no matter how much success you have in this country, are you truly, you know, are we truly valued, and it's weird because like anecdotally, I look at like social media, and when this article, initially, CNN did a feature on it, and a lot of people were like, oh, this is like the, you know, true model of success in this country, and there were others that were like, oh, you know, they've used every trick in, you know, of the trade to do things illegally. You're always going to have a subsection of people that don't count us as American, when we are quintessentially the American story, and I think we have to feed on the fact that, you know, we've contributed more to this country than we've ever taken away.
Let me ask you about values. You know, institutions, organisations, companies sustain over time, and remain successful or become more successful because of values. In your own interviews with multi-generational entrepreneurs in the Patel-Motel construct, what are the sort of key values that you've taken away?
And equally, do you see that a continuation of those values between generations? Do you see conflict between generations?
Amar Shah
I, you know, there's obviously the grit, the perseverance, the hard work, you know, the belief, and that, I think, carries through to a next generation. But at the same time, you mentioned that there could be, there's different ways of going about how you want, like, the way dad did it is different than the way son did it. What mom did it different the way daughter did it.
But I think there is that sort of like vision of, you know, and I think our, hopefully what the film does is showcase to that generation, this is what your family did in order for you to get where you are. And so I do think that there is a little bit of a difference in the way one generation is going to do it than the next. Rahul, what do you think?
Rahul Rohatgi
Yeah, I mean, listen, one value that came across, and almost everybody we talked to was the inherent sense that many Indians have of hospitality, right? That no matter what type of hotel you're running, your guests are your guests. And again, the guest is God.
If I can tell you a funny story for a minute, Govind, when we went to Oahu, I think in 2022, Amar and I found ourselves, we went, we were at lunch, which is obviously you can imagine that a conference full of Indians is just full. I mean, many, many trays, huge main tables. It was like a thing to do.
We ended up eating lunch actually with a white man who was a vendor. He came to the conference because he was a vendor. He sold, I think he sold doorknobs, door jams, those kinds of things.
And so we started talking to him about, he's like, and he told us, he said, I think he lived in North Carolina, South Carolina. He said, I've been dealing with Patel owners for several dozen years. And he said, when I would deal with the father's generation, right, he had maybe one or two, maybe two or five, he had a few motels I would service and all of our deals would be, you know, essentially I would write, I would write out the contract that was sent to him.
He would sign it. He would, he would connect me to many of his other contacts. Some of them I'm sure were his competitors, you know, in the area.
And that'd be great. I would get, I would give them the same deal. And, you know, they would, we would all sort of, you know, work together.
You know, oh, perhaps he requested I get a little better deal than my friends, but otherwise, you know, it was all good. Like now the son has taken over one of these businesses and he went to business school, so when the son took over, all of a sudden, you know, I've been working with them for dozens of years. I'm asked to provide all kinds of electronic invoices.
He provides me spreadsheets saying how we could potentially, you know, make our business more efficient and all these things that, you know, really it doesn't change the way the business works. It just, for the son, it felt more professional. And so maybe just the value is a little bit there.
I'm not saying the previous generation wasn't ambitious, but they were obviously more in tune with the sense of like, listen, we need to make this work just to feed our family and have a better opportunity. And I think obviously as each generation goes by, if they can, they can sort of do better and think larger, they're going to. And that's what we mostly saw.
And Amit, let me also ask you, I mean, I know there are many enduring stories that you've encountered in your research and your interviews, but what are the last sort of not as we run out of time, what are the maybe the topmost in your mind that, you know, in some ways define all of that has happened in these 70, 80 years in this community and what they've created in not just hospitality, but to the very sense of entrepreneurship in the United States and perhaps the world.
Amar Shah
So you're asking me like what, what I specifically, what I, which story resonates with me the most?
Yeah. I mean, one or two stories. I mean, the most endearing ones that inspired you or moved you.
Amar Shah
I mean, I definitely go back to, I think one of the stories that really resonated with me actually goes back to one of the origin, original OGs, the original Gujaratis I like to call them. That was D. Lal.
He, along with obviously Kanji Munshu and Nunn and Lal were the three guys that kind of like started it all. But D. Lal's story was incredible because he actually served in World War II as a veteran and that's how he got his American citizenship.
And he came to this country, I think there were like five or six different countries that he stayed at different parts of it to get to America eventually. And that persistence to get to this country for me showcases how quintessential like American this story is for all of us. And to me, that's the one that resonated the most was that he laid the foundation, never really wanted, you know, the credit for it.
But then he also left, he had a diary that we were able to listen to and also a one that he wrote. And just to hear his story, tell it like really left me with a first person perspective of how tough this journey was and how it was important for them to get here and do something about it. So that to me was one of the most incredible stories.
Rahul, what about you?
Rahul Rohatgi
If Govind's asking, I'm happy to answer. But sure. You know, for me, the thing that always sticks out is actually something that we actually show in the film, which is we mentioned Jyoti Sarolia, her mom, Savita, who is now, you know, in her seventies and still is running their several properties.
She lives right across the street from San Francisco from one of their, from one of their properties. I think it's a State Shore, Best Western. And she, to this day, she wakes up and we filmed this.
She wakes up early in the morning and she goes for her walk at the exact same time. And she often is joined by her daughter, Jyoti, if she's in town, if Jyoti's late, she's very aggravated because the time is scheduled. Time is money for her.
She has to do her morning walk. She has to be home at a certain time because that is when she starts making her calls. She calls every property manager that they have and goes through the overnight receipts, goes through the books, goes through any plans.
And that is all on time. And just to see that dedication of somebody, you know, who's been doing this now for over 50 years, you know, and still just on top of everything. And she's not sitting there again on her iPad or those kind of things.
I'm sure she could figure out if she needed to. She just has her way of doing business, has done well for her, and she continues to do it. And she really enjoys doing it.
She doesn't have to do it anymore. They have people who could do that for her, but she does it. And that was really inspiring.
Amar Shah
Yeah, I mean, it reminds me like it's like Warren Buffett, right? He doesn't change no matter what success he has. He just has the same car, you know, does the same thing every day.
And I think that's the power of the habit that Jyoti's mom has. Yeah, I she and she's a great chef, too. So I loved we loved her food.
And that's a wonderful note to end on, Amar and Rahul, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your journey or your your role in this journey and your documentation of it. And I do wish you and your film great success and for the and for the larger feature that will, I'm sure, follow soon.
Amar Shah
Thank you, Govind. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Govind.
Thank you.
