The Night Manager: Memoirs of a Hospitality Student
by Nakul Anand
Published by
Harper Business
In a memoir spanning his entire career in hospitality with ITC Hotels, now a separately listed company following its demerger from salt-to-cigarettes conglomerate ITC, Nakul Anand, former ITC executive director in charge of hotels, traces the evolution of India’s hotel industry and his experience as a hotelier and an institution builder.
The son of migrants from Pakistan, Mr Anand writes matter-of-factly but sparingly about his early life — his father’s untimely death, his schooling at the Bishop Cotton School in Shimla, and the death of his younger sister. We get to know his mother Nirmal’s name only when we reach the photo palettes later in the book. But when it comes to his career as hotelier, Mr Anand is meticulous with the details. He takes time and care to set the foundations right and weave a narrative that shows how the hospitality industry became a calling right from his school days.
Mr Anand names his book The Night Manager — which shares its name with an action-packed web series loosely based on a John Le Carre novel — after what he considers to be the most rewarding phase of his career. It was in this role that he came into his own at the ITC Chola Sheraton in Chennai after completing ITC’s hotel management training programme in the late 1970s.
While the graveyard shift may be a quiet one, Mr Anand decided to make the most of it by extending his shift into the early hours, to see how the hotel came to life at breakfast time.
To say that Mr Anand is a stickler for customer service would be an understatement. But that does not mean that the senior executive, awarded Hotelier of the World in 2019, went to work with blinkers on. What we see in these pages is a man of the world, who can also struggle to keep a straight face at the complicated love lives of actors when hosting a film unit at the ITC Chola early in his career.
The book delves into the details of hospitality, unpacking every aspect of the service industry —from management training and problem-solving for service staff to grooming and ensuring that ITC Hotels took the lead in green certification by reducing its carbon footprint. Though all this can be a lot of take in for the lay reader, the details attest to the sheer expanse of Mr Anand’s career, his eye for detail, his sense of being invested in his job and in keeping a finger on the pulse of the hospitality sector.
Mr Anand holds his seniors in high regard. From Habib Rehman, his former boss at the ITC Maurya in New Delhi, to ITC’s first Indian chairman Ajit Narain Haksar, he makes it a point to give credit where due. But he reserves his highest regard for former ITC chairman Y C Deveshwar, who died in 2019.
From equating Mr Deveshwar with the ideal general as described by the Chinese writer Sun Tzu in The Art of War, to crediting him with having the prescience to expand the hospitality business while allowing Mr Anand the opportunity to grow in his career, the writer is eloquent in his praise for the former ITC top boss.
“A great leader is one who commands love of a kind that makes people willing to do anything for them, even if they simultaneously evoke fear,” he gushes. “Mr Deveshwar was the perfect example of this leadership style. I would shiver with fright when he walked into my office, and yet I loved the man and was always ready to hug him,” he adds.
While service is the mainstay of the hotel industry, it is the chapter on food that could pique the reader’s interest the most. Mr Anand gives us the story behind the establishment of the iconic restaurant brands Dum Pukht and Bukhara at ITC Maurya. For a gastronome, reading about the detailing of the menus and the cooking techniques could be compelling enough to visit the hotel at the first given opportunity!
A defining feature of the book is Mr Anand’s emphasis on reading and writing. He charts the evolution of the modern hotel manual, its origin in France, and even shares the book titles for those who may find them useful. The chapters are punctuated with lists, writeups, action items and even pamphlets for employees that he wrote for them.
The Night Manager makes for an exhaustive but immersive read that offers a peek into the mind of a seasoned hotelier and a front-row view of the evolution of India’s hospitality industry — from name cards and actual keys to computers and access keys.
