"Role of Social Media & Digital Marketing in the Hotel Industry post COVID-19 – how do we get our guests back?

CEO - Roseate Hotels & Resorts, Kush Kapoor started his career as a room boy with The Trident, Udaipur & Trident Cochin after completing his ‘Hotel Management’ diploma from IHM Hyderabad. With over 22 years of experience in the hospitality industry Mr. Kapoor has covered the most iconic hotels during his hospitality career across India including ‘Oberoi Group’, ‘The Taj Group’ of hotels and ‘The Leela Group’ and has many laurels to his feat.

He launched Roseate Hotels & Resorts Brand in India which has become an iconic Luxury hotel Brand in India. He has been awarded with the Innovative Hotelier of the Year India, 2010 award by Hotelier India. Other awards include 5 star Diamond Award by American Academy Of Hospitality Sciences for 2009 -2010, Best Hotel, Best Convention Hotel & Best Spa Hotel in India for 2010-2011 & 2011-12, 2017-18, 18-2019, by Bloomberg International, Best Coffee shop, Best Bar, Best Indian Specialty Restaurant, Best Italian Specialty Restaurant in the city by Times Food Guide during his stint at Leela Kempinski Hotel & Residences, Gurgaon.

In addition to the above Mr. Kapoor was a Certified Departmental Trainer from Taj Corporate Office and has been on the panel for the inspection and classification of the hotels in NCR region by HRANI committee.

In personal life Mr. Kapoor is happily married and enjoys travelling, listening to good music and staying fit. As a fitness junkie, Mr. Kapoor has benchmarked SIX SIGMA Green Belt, Black Belt Trainer & Master Black Belt, certified by RABQSA, a Global body formed in 2005 by Registrar Accreditation Board (RAB) of USA and Quality Society of Australasia (QSA) of Australia, completed Psychology certificate course from Oxford, Tai Chi from Harvard University, General Managers Program from Cornell Uni

Manoj Nair is currently the Marketing Leader at FCM Travel Solutions - Indian subsidiary of Flight Centre Travel Group, Australia. Having worked in leadership positions with reputed travel companies, he brings with him more than 20 years of experience at FCM Travel Solutions.

Holding a management degree from Mumbai University, Executive Program in Leadership and Management from IIM Kolkata & International MBA from Marketing Week London, Manoj Nair is a hard-core marketer with proven record in brand building and customer centric innovation.

At FCM, Manoj Nair is responsible to drive ROI based marketing solutions for the organisation. Prior to his stint with FCM, Manoj was formulating and implementing marketing strategies for Thomas Cook and Kuoni.

He has been recognized as one of the most influential marketing leaders by World Marketing Congress & CMO Asia.

In this senior management role at Lemon Tree Hotels, he will be responsible for envisioning, implementing and leading the Digital, Distribution, Rewards and E-Commerce Strategy of the group.

Prasad carries with him 18 years with over a decade in the digital space which includes International work practice & Senior Management positions across e-commerce, e-Business Marketing, managing alliances and driving a substantial part of the B2C / Retail business.

He is an MBA in International Business & International Marketing from University of Technology, Sydney, & UNSW Australia. He was associated with Marriott International Inc. as Director – eCommerce, South Asia and also led the Indian Hotels Company Ltd (Taj Group) as Associate Vice President – Digital & E-commerce and has played an integral part of their digital transformation strategy over the years.

A hotelier & restauranteur with over 17 years of experience in both the F&B and hospitality industry. An alumnus of Cornell University, Sachin is very passionate about changing the landscape of the $60 billion(usd) Indian food & beverage Industry. In 2015, Sachin co-founded EazyDiner, India’s only instant table reservation platform which allows its users to book a table at over 10,000 restaurants across India & Dubai, in under 18 seconds. As Chief Innovation Officer, he is responsible for the growth of EazyDiner which has so far grown 300% every year since its inception. He also has a proven track record of building long term customer relations and driving value to partners as well as the organization he works for.

Prior to EazyDiner, Sachin has worked at The Imperial, Grand Hyatt as well as Claridges Hotel in New Delhi and remains till date very focussed and committed to creating innovative and exceptional products and proposition for the end users be it in hotels or of EazyDiner.

In personal life, Sachin is a very avid motorcyclist and clocks up several hundred kilometers of rides on open roads every week. Gaming is another passion, but one which he seldom gets time for being the dad of 2 young boys and a full-time entrepreneur

Apurva Chamaria is the Chief Revenue Officer of RateGain, one of world’s leading SaaS company’s serving over 20,000+ customers in the travel and hospitality industry across 100+ Countries. In his role, he leads sales, marketing, alliances and customer success across the world.

Prior to joining RateGain, Apurva was the Global Head of Corporate Marketing for HCL Technologies, an 8 Bn US$ global IT major.
Under his leadership HCL became the fastest growing brand in the Interbrand top Indian brands list for 2 years in a row (No. 17 in
2016) and was ranked at No.378 and valued at 4.4 Bn US$ in the Brand Finance Global 500 2017 league table. Between 2013-2017, HCL campaigns won 110 prestigious global and regional marketing awards. In his 12 years at HCL, he performed various leadership roles including being CEO’s Vineet Nayar's Chief of Staff and Sales Director at HCL America playing an integral role in scaling the company from 700 Mn to 8 Bn US$. In 2016, he was awarded the “Marketer of the Year” by World Leadership Forum, “Digital Marketer of the Year” by IAMAI and “B2B Marketer of the Year” by Paul Writer. He featured in Pluralsight Digi100 List Powered by Paul Writer, the recognition for the top 100 Digital Marketers in India. In 2018, he was feted as 40 under 40 by the Campaign Asia magazine.

Prior to HCL, he was the youngest country manager at Ranbaxy Laboratories (now Sun Pharmaceuticals) leading the business in Australia & NZ. In various parts of his career, he has worked in Asia-Pacific, India, Africa, U.K. and NorthAmerica.
Top 10 Angel Investor: Recognized by The Economic Times as amongst the top 10 angel investors in India in 2018. Investor at large helping exceptional founders scale companies in Fin-Tech, Global Services, AI, M2M, VR/AR/MR, Content, Video etc. Some of my investee companies include Witty Feed, Inc. 42, Josh Talks, Funlockar (Media-Tech), Sponsify me, CubeRoot (Ad-tech), Chq Book (Fin-Tech), Innov8 (Co-Working), Ahaa & Simulanis (AR/MR/ VR), Lucideus Tech (Cyber-Security), Skill Acquire (Ed-Tech) etc.

He is also a charter member of TiE, New Delhi.
Best-Selling Author & Columnist: He is a columnist for the Pitch and Digital Market Asia magazines. His book “You are the key – unlocking doors through Social Selling” (Bloomsbury) hit # 2 in the Amazon India Best-Sellers list* within 20 days of being launched in Jan 2016 and is currently a best-seller on the WH Smith best-seller list as #1. It was also recognized by Prime-minister Narendra Modi for contributing to Digital India. His second book “Master Growth Hacking” (Random House Penguin) features in the trenches stories of top internet companies in India and was released in August 2018.

Thought-Leader: He is regarded as a thought-leader on “digital transformation” and is regularly quoted in publications. He’s a
sought after speaker and has key-noted at TED x, IAMAI MarCon, DMAI GMAW, Oracle Cloud World, LinkedIn Tech Connect, Microsoft Ignite, Paul Writer GIIMS, Hindustan Times Top 50 Brands, Exchange for Media Pitch Top 50 Brands etc. and teaches a full credit digital marketing course at the Indian Institute of Mass Communication (IIMC) & Great Lakes Institute of Management.
He’s current an academic advisory board member at the 2,000 students strong IMS Group of Institutions. He has also been a member of the advisory board at Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Ahmedabad. He was the chairperson of the DMAI Annual Marketing Gala Conference 2017, which featured 50 CMO speakers and 350+ attendees.

Social Worker: He is a director of the Rotary Club of Delhi Mid-West focusing on programs that are solving rural sanitation, water and education problems. He recently co-founded the NGO, ShowCause.org to lead change in accessible healthcare for all in India.
He completed his schooling from the prestigious Mayo College, Ajmer. He holds a double master’s in business management (from IMI) and advertising (from IIMC, JNU). He is an alumnus of the Harvard Business School, Boston and pursuing his PhD. in digital engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

Dhananjay is a key member of the Fortune Executive Leadership team and drives
the chain’s Sales and Distribution, Marketing and Revenue strategy. With over
twenty five years in the hospitality industry, Dhananjay provides strategic insights
to drive the top line business of the chain.
Dhananjay also oversees the Sales & Marketing function of the WelcomHeritage
brand.
Throughout his career as a Sales and Marketing professional, Dhananjay has
worked for some of the most sought-after brands in the industry in a diverse
range of regional and corporate roles where he successfully led the sales and
marketing and managed global teams.
Prior to this role, he was Regional Director of Sales &Marketing, South Asia at the
erstwhile Starwood Hotels & Resorts.

Noesis is India’s leading hospitality Transaction advisory and consulting firm which provide end to end hospitality solutions across India and South Asia. Thousands of hotel owners, developers, investors, lenders, management companies, and public agencies across India rely on Noesis support to make informed business decisions.

Nandivardhan is responsible for the overall direction, strategic development and growth of the firm. He has an experience of over a decade in multi-disciplinary advisory and transactions ranging from hospitality to social development projects. He is an alumni of Punjab University, from where he did his B.Com (Hons) in Financial Management, and then later pursued Masters in Business Administration from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai.

He exclusively advised some of the largest Foreign direct investment and domestic investment hotel transactions in India. His key skill sets are as follows.

a) Hospitality Investment banking – Buy and sell side advisory
b) Brand & Operator Search and Contract Negotiation
c) Consulting, Feasibility & Valuations for New & Existing hospitality Projects
d) Capital raising (All kinds of Debt & Equity) for hospitality projects
e) Restructuring and Turnaround advisory for New & Existing hospitality Projects

He is active at social platforms as well currently officiating as Club secretary for Rotary club of Bombay West and he is Paul Hariss Felow recognized by Rotary International.