For Ghulam Samdani, the journey to become Ole Sereni Hotel’s general manager has evidently been one long but inspirational path of success.
From a humble background of a restaurant intern in 1994 for six months, Ghulam has kept his pulse in the hospitality industry and has since then served in four continents – Europe, America, Asia and Africa.
His first steps as a hotelier saw him rise through the ranks in Switzerlands four leading city hotels before proceeding to the US where he became an assistant restaurant manager at Wellesley Country Club for almost an year. Boylston Palace tapped him for a restaurant manager’s job and opportunity that gave him yet another step of becoming the director of food and beverage at Holiday Inn in the US.
Holder of a Hotel & Restaurant Managementdegree and masters in Organizational Behaviour at Johnson & Wales University in the US, Ghulam’s nudge to acquire more experience saw him polish and rise through various ranks in the hotel industry. Among them was being the event manager at Eagle Pond Lodge in USA for nearly three years before scooping a more challenging general manager’s job at Sarovar Premiere Hotel in Kerela, India. This awesome responsibility had Ghulam manage the entire food and beverage operations of domestic and international airport of “Trivandrum”, which is leased to the hotel owners.
Humbled, assertive and jovial, Ghulam who been at the helm of Ole Sereni Hotel since August 2010 is affirmative that besides the wonderful aesthetics that hotels should have it is service delivery in hotels that renders the business worthwhile results. He further notes that effective hotel management is the pillar that contributes to the most profitable business to the hotel and the economy as a whole.
In 2005, Ghulam initiated Foreign Internship Program with German based Hospitality Institutes.
His effort to initiate a corporate social responsibilty programme led him initiate a foundation branded SMILES, which offers a helping hand to the mentally and physically challenged persons. Numerous fundraising activities have been conducted since inception of the initiative in 2006.
