The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) announced that its members have unanimously elected Pradeep Shetty, Director, Maharaja Hotels, Mumbai as its President. He will take charge of the office from January 1, 2024.

Prior to this, he held the position of Vice President and has been an actively engaged member of the association for more than a decade. He also serves as the President of the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Western India (HRAWI).

“In the role of President at FHRAI, I am committed to addressing several pressing priorities with a sense of urgency. We intend to actively engage with the government for creating a more conducive and regulatory framework for the hospitality sector and the long pending request of the sector for granting infrastructure status is top of our agenda. This can be a game changer by facilitating long term loans at competitive interest rates to accelerate growth in the sector,” Shetty said in a statement.

Required incentives

He added that more stimulus packages and incentives are required from the government to equip the sector to achieve the ambitious target of welcoming 100 million international tourists by 2047, which include a favourable GST regime and ease of doing business measures in hospitality.

Other challenges include music copyright matters, service charges matters and anti -competitive activities by big tech companies, he added.

The Executive Committee also elected the other new office bearers of FHRAI. Surendra Kumar Jaiswal, K Nagaraju and  T S Walia were elected as Vice Presidents from Hotel & Restaurant Association of Northern India (HRANI), The South India Hotels & Restaurants Association (SIHRA) and Hotel & Restaurant Association of Eastern India (HRAEI), respectively. 

DVS Somaraju has been elected as honorary treasurer and Nirav Gandhi as the honorary  secretary, while Sudesh Kumar Poddar and  Amarvir Singh will serve as Jt. honarary  secretary of the federation, the statement added.

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