PEOPLE
I wonder, while speaking with Surinder Arora, if he had any hint of his future when, not longer after his arrival in the UK from India at the age of 13 he was manning the night shift at London’ s renaissance hotel as a pot washer. Did he, for example, have any inkling that the hotel where he grafted overnight would one day be part of a property portfolio worth over £ 2.5bn? Or that he, having shown the kind of grit and tenacity that only the most successful entrepreneurs exhibit, would have the privilege of being the name over the door? We only have an hour or so to talk – at 67 and having spent more than 30 years growing and leading the business he founded – Arora is as busy as ever. But in that short time, the passion with which he speaks of his career journey, his business and the team he affectionately refers to as a family, leaves me in little doubt: the pot washer was always destined for great things. Arora is the founder and chairman of Arora Group, the UK’ s largest privately owned hotel company. Its portfolio spans 19 properties, franchise partnerships with Hilton, Marriott and IHG among others, and a construction arm that has built several of the hotels the group now operates. There is also a £ 2bn development pipeline and a proposal to privately finance a third runway at Heathrow
– a project that says something about the scale of his ambition, and his sense of ownership and connection over an airport that has been such a central part of his life for 50 years. Arriving in Britain from Punjab, India in 1972, Arora was 13 years old and knew no English. He left school without GCSEs or A-levels, started work at 18 and took up football refereeing around the same time – a pastime that has played a crucial role in his approach to business to this day.“ I always say that I owe my career to being a referee,” Arora reflects, explaining how the philosophy he developed on the pitch— how to hold authority without wielding it, how to manage difficult moments without making them worse and how to give and receive respect with equal measure— became the template for everything that followed.“ You can only clap with two hands,” Arora says, of his approach to getting players on side.“ I realised very quickly when refereeing that the only way I can gain respect is if I give respect first, not yellow cards.” When he opened his first hotel in 1999, he told his manager Guy Morris – a veteran of 20 years and more than 40 hotels – that he wanted to run things differently. Treat the staff like family, the guests like royalty. And it’ s been that way ever since.
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