Ricardo D’Lima speaks about his role as General Manager of Fortune Miramar and Cluster General Manager- Goa and West Coast for Fortune Park Hotels Ltd, and plans for the future
A brief about your childhood, educational background and work experiences
I was born in Chennai, a place with many similarities to Goa with its coastline, culture and heritage. I was ecstatic to be in Goa, and it was a personal and professional choice, and an easy decision to relocate. I completed my primary and secondary schooling at Don Bosco in Chennai, and am an alumnus of the Institute of Hotel Management in Chennai, and simultaneously acquired a degree in Business Administration from Annamalai University. I started my professional career with Le Royal Meridian in Chennai, and over the last 22 years, I have had the opportunity to work with many Indian and international hotel brands. For the last 9 years, I have been with the Fortune Park Hotels, part of the ITC Hotels Division. I started off as a General Manager and today I head a cluster of four operational hotels and 1 project hotel across Goa and the west coast. In our company, we have a tagline that says ‘Let Fortune take you places,’ so I have had the privilege to travel both in India and abroad including the time when I was posted at the Dharamshala. It is a beautiful town where you have the Dhauladhar ranges and from my office I had an amazing view of them. I was fortunate to meet His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, and I guess these are some of the perks that come with working in hotels.
What made you decide to pursue a career in the hospitality industry?
It started with my love for food and I love to cook as well as experiment with food and that’s the primary reason why I decided to pursue hospitality as a career choice. Both my grandmothers and my mother were excellent cooks, fast and very versatile in the kitchen; Growing up, I don’t remember buying cakes or getting a caterer to make us food for family gatherings. The motivation and interest came from all the ladies in the house. I used to watch Yan Can Cook which was a popular food show in the 90s on the Star Network and that further fuelled my passion. I decided to enroll in a hotel management course. I had an opportunity to intern for the famous Golden Dragon Restaurant which was a specialty restaurant of the Taj and I specialised in Asian cuisine there. From then on there was no looking back.
You started your career as an Operations Trainee. Today you are the General Manager of Fortune Miramar, as well as Cluster General Manager – Goa and West Coast for Fortune Park Hotels Ltd. Did you always want to be a GM? What motivated you to reach the position?
When I started out I wanted to be a chef. But then I realised that as a chef I would be lost inside the hotel. I felt that I performed better when I was amongst guests and people. I decided to move out of the kitchen and come to the front of the hotel. I took up an interest in viniculture and realised that I liked wines and wanted to know everything about the processes involved.
Later it was whiskies, single malts, other liquors, and liqueurs that got me interested and I moved into bartending. Then I took up handling nightclubs with celebrity DJs and class acts. I then became a pre-opening specialist. I began conceptualising and coming up with new restaurant ideas, new themes, new cuisines and opened up a few restaurants and bars since then. One of the restaurants that I help conceptualise and ran myself was called the Azulia, which was Chennai’s first Mediterranean restaurant. I ran that for three years during which we won 11 awards, 3 of which were recognition from the prestigious Miele Guide. Later I took up events and catering management and the biggest of these was an event for which I organised for 9000 people. Throughout my career there was always an eagerness to learn more, to want to continuously improve and learn new things. Sometimes I would stay back in meetings after my part was concluded to understand and take in more knowledge. I would attend meetings related to business developments, revenue management, marketing, and finance just to get to know all the aspects of the industry.
I would also talk to my fellow colleagues and try to understand how their department worked, and the difficulties there, and find out ways and means how to overcome these obstacles. While helping out my colleagues I also got to learn a lot in this way. This worked well for me because when I had to move from department head to General Manager, it was an easy transition because I had a fair understanding of how things worked. I am not done, facility planning, hotel projects, renovation and refurbishment are my new interests and I have already been involved with few in the last few years. Where there is a lot of technical knowledge involved, I sit with architects, consultants, and engineers and try to understand various aspects. There is this hunger inside of me that always wants to learn more, explore more and evolve. In my case that will be the constant motivator and not the designation.
As a hospitality leader, what is your management style?
I would say that I am a transformational style of leader. In today’s fast-paced, diverse, and technology-driven world, it is the need of the hour. I believe in continuous improvement, I like to learn new things and do things differently. I tend to work smart instead of working hard and I do look at things that are holding me back. The book What got you here won’t get you there by Marshall Goldsmith has helped me a lot.
You need to evolve, develop, and continue learning every day. I am always open to new ideas and fresh perspectives; I look at things from a 360-degree point of view and see what the ground reality is. I make strategic decisions based on market forecasts and have an ear-to-the-ground approach. I believe we need to be innovative to stay ahead of the curve in today’s competitive market that we operate in. A non-traditional approach to my task ahead; I am pro-active, I can’t sit and wait for things to happen rather I would make it happen, set the tone and trend.
I also keep telling myself that I don’t have the answers to everything and I reach out for help when needed. As a leader, this has helped me develop a team because I let them know that I trust them and give them responsibility that they can handle. This has helped me to be a leader who can bring about change.
What are your greatest strengths and how have they contributed to your managerial position?
As a person, I am very resilient and when faced with trauma, difficulties, and stress I was able to bounce back and thrive. I also feel that a resilient person is very well aware and tuned in to what’s his strengths and weaknesses which he uses to his advantage. Whenever there is adversity he has confidence in his own ability and self-belief, which successfully helps him resolve issues. Operational agility is another character trait of mine. I think in today’s world, you need to be agile. One must approach work with an open mind, measured responses, consider pros and cons, make faster decisions, and adapt to change is the need of the hour in the current dynamic, volatile uncertain, complex and ambiguous world that we operate in. To survive we need to respond quickly to opportunities and threats.
Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?
I am excited about the future as the Indian economy is on the up-trend. It is led by a rapidly growing domestic consumer market and the tourism industry ranks amongst the fastest-growing economic sectors in India, which is again led by domestic demands.
As a hospitality professional this is encouraging; and Goa as a tourist destination is certainly in the forefront of driving that growth. I see myself contributing in areas of sustainability, digitalisation, skilling, and re-skilling. For me, a hospitality innovation and incubator hub is something I have been thinking about, hopefully, someday I will be able to put this together and work on it in the near future. In this way, I will be giving back to the industry that has taught me and made me who I am today and also nurturing new talent.
What advice would you offer to those who aspire to become a GM in the hotel industry someday?
The first thing is you are a new manager so ask for help. Own up when you make a mistake, seek feedback, don’t get discouraged and you need to remind yourself that you were selected to do the job among others.
Start delegating because you are not a doer anymore but a leader and a coach, and by delegating you are letting your team know that you trust them to do a task and value their contributions and insights.
Be present while looking forward to the future. You need to be 100% committed to what you are currently doing, otherwise you would have regrets when you head into the future.
You need to master the art of managing up; while you build a strong relationship with your team you want the same with your boss. So even if you have a boss who is difficult to deal with, managing up will make that relationship better than it would have been.
It is important to network in our industry whether it is industry events, online communities, professional associates, or even social media. Meet new people stay in touch with existing relationships which helps in contributing to social well-being and exchanging new ideas. Meeting new people helps in building your confidence and increases your visibility in the market while leveraging new connections. Lastly, just be yourself and that is very important as you don’t want to be somebody else.
