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HOTELS People Issue: Google hotel philosopher

Ask most hotel CEOs to describe their concept in five words and you probably won’t hear “no bull” as two of them. Then again, most hotel CEOs never had to go to work under police protection, either. Sharan Pasricha, CEO, Hoxton, has been there and done that. The same maverick tendencies Pasricha brought to one of the lifestyle segment’s hottest up and coming flags also made their mark on his uncle’s leather goods factory in Delhi. Tasked with turning the company around, Pasricha did just that, beginning with trimming the fat (for example, 100 employees he felt weren’t working their best). And, in return, he was burned in effigy.

That might seem like a surprising backstory for a CEO who calls his job “conductor of our choir” and thrives on collaboration. But, if there’s one lesson Pasricha has culled from a resume with credits as diverse as a media start-up and an investment firm, it’s how to switch from single to multi-player mode. And, he’s the first one to admit that no matter how single-minded an entrepreneur needs to be, knowing when to be the student is as important as knowing when to be the master.

“I’ve always been a jack of all trades but really a master of none,” Pasricha says. “I’ve stood on the shoulders of several giants in my life and there have been a handful of people that have inspired me to do what I do today. I’ve learned that you really need to surround yourself with people that are way smarter than you are who can add value to your business in ways that you certainly can’t.”

"We don't hire based on experience at the Hox and have pretty much adopted the Google philosphy at our business, where if you're smart enough you'll figure it out." -- Sharan Parsicha
“We don’t hire based on experience at the Hox and have pretty much adopted the Google philosphy at our business, where if you’re smart enough you’ll figure it out.” — Sharan Parsicha

Taking a quick peek beneath Hoxton’s quirky It Brit aesthetic and “anti-hotel” attitude reveals the same dichotomy. “Only hire ‘seasoned hospitality professionals’ is probably the worst advice I’ve ever gotten,” he says. “We don’t hire based on experience at the Hox and have pretty much adopted the Google philosophy at our business where if you’re smart enough you’ll figure stuff out.”

But, Pasricha’s no more interested in being the cookie-cutter rebel than he is an establishment scion. He’s the first one to admit that he’s hired senior staff from random meetings, but he doesn’t insist on working with outside whiz kids. Ennismore’s managing director, Stephen Lloyd, has a resume that’s purely blue chip, including a stint as vice president, operations for InterContinental Hotels Group. The restaurants in Hoxton’s properties are the brainchild of the team behind the ultra-buzzy Soho House flag. “We couldn’t be more different—the core of their business is an exclusive private members club, while the Hoxton is inclusive and we like to think of us as more of a public members club—but our two businesses share similar values,” Pasricha says. “We work with them on concept through to pricing and design on all our restaurants.” (Hoxton and Soho are launching a standalone restaurant joint venture, as well).

Armed with that blend of seasoned expertise and an outsider’s willingness to question, Pasricha’s ready to prove that Hoxton is ready to move out of the small pond of offbeat London locales (art-driven neighborhoods Holborn and Shoreditch) and swim with the big fish on the international scene. “We’re doubling the size of our business every six months right now,” he says. Openings in Amsterdam later this year and Paris and New York in 2016 would nearly triple the flag’s portfolio, and Pasricha already has an eye on Chicago, Hamburg and Copenhagen.

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