Rinkesh Patel: ‘It was all about having that American dream’

Rinkesh Patel is living the American Dream.

He is president of Columbus-based RAM Hotel Management LLC, a company he built from nothing into a business that owns 10 hotels in Alabama and Georgia, with three more opening before the end of the year. In the next two years, he plans to add six more hotels, including a high-end Marriott property in the 1200 block of Broadway in the heart of downtown Columbus.

When he was just 16, he moved to this country from Navsari, India. That was 1998.

He worked in his uncle’s Opelika, Ala., hotel and graduated from Opelika High School. By the time he was 20, he bought his first hotel, the Days Inn in Phenix City.

In 14 years, he has grown and changed his business model, bringing in his brother, Matt, to become one of the region’s top hotel developers with 280 employees that could grow to 450 in the next two years.

Last week, Patel sat down with Ledger-Enquirer senior reporter Chuck Williams and chief photographer Mike Haskey to talk about the American success story he continues to write.

Here are excerpts of that interview, edited for length and clarity.

Q: When did you and your family move to the U.S.?

A: We came to the States in 1998. ... All of our family has been in the States for some time. We were the only ones back home.

Q: How did your family end up in Opelika?

A: That’s an interesting story. Obviously, my mom’s brother was there and he had a hotel over there. In the earlier part, when we came here, Dad — he does come from an academic background, but nothing was applicable here — ended up being a hotel manager. He was the hotel manager at one point in Selma, and then New Albany, Miss., and Tifton. As he’s going up the ladder, he would move around, but for our stability we stayed with our uncle in Opelika. We stayed at a hotel, actually. I was attending high school and I was the custodian of the hotel in Opelika at the age of 16.

Q: Did you have many close friends?

A: I did actually have friends. There was a cultural difference there. You come from India, and back then India was still an emerging economy — social media and stuff was not there — and it was still a very conservative society. When you came here, it was a little bit different. Yes, I had friends, and it was a very nice thing — kept me busy and guided me through the process because education is very one-dimensional over there. It’s all about academics. You don’t have any fun.

Q: You don’t have football or the ...

A: You don’t have the football. You don’t have the prom. You don’t have the pep rallies. You don’t have all the fun stuff. You’re like, “OK, what is this?” It was literally learning educationally ... and also learning the culture and about how to celebrate your success and how to celebrate your life. It was both of those things. Two completely different things, though.

Q: Was it culture shock?

A: It was not a cultural shock, (but) it was all new to me. We have families here and they travel back home, so they bring the tales. You kind of know what’s going on, so it’s not a shock, but it’s still a new thing.

Q: Did you want to stay here at 16 or did you want to go back to India?

A: It’s funny you ask. Selfishly, some part of me wanted to go back home because my wife — I was dating her back home and I’ve been dating her since I was in seventh grade — leaving her behind, we’re apart for almost six years. Back in the day, there weren’t emails or anything and a phone call would cost you 40 cents a minute. ... Our parents are still very reserved and conservative. ... We have different perspectives. We have a different lens. Although we didn’t grow up here, we’re here now and we know more about the culture here and things here. ... I think there are so many things here better than over there — when it comes to the connectivity that you have with your kids and stuff like that.

Q: Explain that.

A: Back then, if you had any difficult subject, whether it’s dating, it might be sex or relationship or whatever it is, back home, you dared to ask that. Here, you’re preparing them as you go through the different cycles of life. You’re getting in front of it before it happens, so that’s a very good thing.

Q: Do you think landing here at 16 was an advantage that helped you assimilate into the Western culture?

A: I’m glad I did when I was 16. I think it worked out in my favor. I wish I was here a little bit early. I’m kind of like neither here, neither there — if that makes any sense. I wish I would be more connected with my high school mates and in college. They’ve already got those bonds with other individuals ... there was a familiarity there, but still there was not a bond. Those kinds of bonds get created in elementary, middle school, and as you grow up. I had those bonds with my friends back in India. It’s a different thing, and then as they ran from high school to their colleges and upper education, their circle changed too.

Q: How many hours a week were you working?

A: I’d work probably 32 hours a week — 30 to 40.

Q: The Deep South has its own cultural and racial issues. Did you have any obstacles?

A: No, none whatsoever. I think people embraced me.

Q: Why?

A: I don’t know. First off, I never thought there was any discrimination or there were any differences, especially in the school system and college, and even outside the place. I was very genuine in my dealings and people saw me for what I was and didn’t judge me for who I was, but what I was doing. I don’t know.

Q: Obviously, the hotel business has been the family business. Your current business is a very Western model, from what I can tell.

A: It is, it is. Here’s the thing, Chuck. When we got into this business, it was all about having that American dream. Quite honestly, we knew it. We knew how to labor. We had good work ethic. We had good moral compasses. We’re from a good family. All those things were going for us. I think you could almost say that I knew how to toil in the field. Our family did that.

Q: What was your first hotel?

A: It was the Days Inn in Phenix City.

Q: What do you remember about that transaction?

A: I was sitting with my uncle in his office in Opelika and ...

Q: You were how old?

A: I was on the cusp of being 21. A real estate buyer came in. We’d been working for somebody and working really hard and, hey, we want that American dream now. A flier came in and I showed it to him. I was like, “Hey, that hotel’s up for sale. ... I’ve been to Columbus, but I don’t remember where Phenix City is.” I gave it to him. I said, “Hey, I want to go look at that one.” He was like, “Why don’t you do that?” Because my uncle, he was a very nice person and he allowed me to do a lot of nice things that I would not let somebody else do in my position. I was writing his business case studies. I was writing emails to his bankers, signing his checks. I was doing a lot of his work. ...

Q: What did you pay for it?

A: We paid $2 million.

Q: At 20 years old, you were able to pull $2 million together to buy a hotel.

A: That’s another story, man. We had to deal with a lot of banks. Nobody’s going to give me a loan.

Q: How did you get the ...

A: Obviously we don’t have financials. We had the down payment. We didn’t have the income. You need the income and you need lots of other things. ...

Q: ... So, you got a Small Business Administration loan?

A: I did, I did, but we had to find it. It wasn’t available. You had to go through hoops to get it. It’s not that easy.

Q: Wow, this is the American dream?

A: It is American dream, yes.

Q: You get the hotel. How long did you have it before you got the itch to do another hotel?

A: I got that one and then I bought another one in Cuthbert, Ga. ... I kept it for about two years and I figured out that, hey, a 30-room hotel doesn’t make sense for me over there and especially in the middle of nowhere. Even a smaller one like Phenix City is still a high barrier for somebody like me who’s just starting off.

Q: Did you lose money on the Cuthbert hotel?

A: I did not. I sold it in two years. ...

Q: Are you and Matt business partners?

A: We are. Matt got into it at the very end. Matt enjoyed the school system and college system — let’s put it this way. He had those parties and everything.

Q: Matt was better at school, right?

A: He got into the school system in middle school, so he has that as a group. He had stronger bonds, so he had a very good, fun ...

Q: Where did he go to college?

A: He went to Auburn and he graduated in ’08. I wanted him to have all that and our parents did, too. We were in a different position back then.

Q: When did you expand out of the Days Inn and start looking at the Marriott, Hampton?

A: I bought and sold hotels here and there up to 2007, and that’s when we really built our first hotel, which was Country Inn and Suites in Bradley Park. That was my first new build, yes. Completely different ballgame. It’s completely different signs. Development is different than operations.

Q: What led you to go from buying existing properties to developing your own properties?

A: Obviously we wanted to expand, and you had two options there — either to acquire more hotels or to build more hotels. To acquire, you might not have something available right where you are in the proximity. You might need to go far out. You might need to go to Atlanta to buy. Obviously, we wanted to do it in a close proximity. The only thing we could find was an opportunity to build. By building a new hotel, you’re achieving both. At the same time, remember, BRAC was happening. This was one of the BRAC thing, and we saw a tremendous amount of compression in the market and we built it. Since being local here, we were one of the very first ones to build it.

Q: How did you get in with Hilton to build the (Phenix City) Hampton Inn?

A: When we opened the Country Inn and Suites, it was a successful project in terms of development and we wanted to even grow some more. We started evaluating the markets and we said, “Hey, we want to do it.” We always wanted to be in a Marriott and Hilton arena, but because of our existing holdings of the hotels and the brand they were associated with, we didn’t have that first pick, or we didn’t have that preferential treatment or priority.

Q: Because you hadn’t done one.

A: We hadn’t done one. Absolutely. We were not proven. Nobody would want to put a bet on me. Just like banks, brands are also picky. They underwrite you. I had thought that I would probably be 10 years out, that ... (it would be) 2017 when I would have my first Hampton, or first Hilton product.

Q: How many Hilton and Marriott brand hotels do you have now?

A: We have five Hiltons and five Marriotts right now.

Q: You’re now strictly in the development arena?

A: We’re strictly into development and management, yes. We have evolved. If you look at earlier days, Chuck, we were owner/operators and we were associated with budget and economy chain hotels. That’s what it was. It was a family business. Everybody hands on. I did most of the back office work. I was the liaison between the franchise. I was the liaison between the banker, risk management. Dad managed the front desk. I came back from school and did the paperwork. Mom and Matt helped us whenever they can. I still remember, we’d get sold out and we’d be short of a housekeeping staff, and we would be the one cleaning the rooms. We did all that. As we evolved and as we got bigger, we had better brands. We had scale of economy. The revenue was there.

Q: How many budget hotels did you sell off?

A: Four.

Q: Did you fare well in the sale of all your budget hotels?

A: I did.

Q: You were able to build a little extra capital there.

A: I was, yes. We recycled it back into the development.

Q: What you’re laying out here is a classic American college business school case study in entrepreneurship. But you’re not the classic American college ...

A: No, I had to learn on my own. You have the etiquettes that you pick up when you were in school and college, but what happens in reality is a lot different than textbook. It’s a little bit of everything.

Q: When you brought the Marriott people here in May, you had two decision makers with Marriott here looking at Columbus. Before they got to town, did you think you had a chance to get the AC Hotel?

A: Chuck, I did, yes —always did. We just had to accelerate it up a little bit, but we did. I think we had envisioned a hotel here, a grand hotel here. Might have been 2020 plan. We just pushed it up a little bit.

Q: What did you sell in downtown Columbus that they bought?

A: I think it was a two-part thing. It was demand generators for the hotel rooms. You’ve got to have a demand generator. If there’s no demand generators, you don’t have the revenues. You don’t have the revenues, you can’t build a hotel. You can’t service the debt. Simple as that.

The second thing is, a brand like this is going to need community engagement. Community engagement here is tremendous. Uptown Columbus, the events they do, the participation from the local citizens here is ... really overwhelming. They do have ownership into the community here. That and the vibrancy of the things that’s going on over here.

Q: Still, you’re coming into a market where essentially the top hotel room in town is $125, $130 a night. You’re going to be $175-$200 a night. How do you do that?

A: We do have a Hampton and a Courtyard right there. We’ve got about 500 rooms in this market existing right now, so we know that there’s people who do not mind paying more that are staying at those hotels. If there was a box that had those offering, they would unwrap it and they would enjoy it.

Q: You know that there are people that aren’t going to think twice about $200 a night because they’re currently staying with you?

A: Yes. That’s the reason why we built our Hampton, because they were staying at Days Inn and they did not mind paying $150 bucks at Hampton Inn.

Q: You have almost — and this word’s probably going to come out wrong — but you have a cockiness to you that is a confidence. It’s like, “OK, this is an intensely, immensely confident guy.” Where does this confidence come from?

A: Doing it all myself. Being there, checking the guest in. Remember, I had to keep up with the hotel. If there was something wrong with your shower, I would come fix that. If there was something wrong with your billing on the folio, the front desk would not know — I would have to do that. If there was a sales (person) that was not achieving the goal, I would be the person with you trying to get you there.

You wear all the hats there. When we couldn’t afford a $125-a-square-foot contractor when the market was so hot, guess what we did, Chuck? We did not pay their price. We were the GC. We opened the hotel. We subcontracted a lot of the work. We were wearing hardhats. I was driving a forklift unloading a tractor-trailer when Hampton opened up. We were doing all that stuff. It’s not confidence. We’re underwriting it even before it happens. We’re saying we have a discipline, and we’re confident — we don’t break the discipline.

Q: Is that cultural?

A: I think somewhat it might be cultural. You could say that. For me, personally, it always has been about discipline. That’s how I was individually when I grew up. If I had to do the homework, the homework got done. If I had to do this, that got done, then everything else. That’s how I’m wired. You can say that. I’m expecting that out of my company. If you were to go and randomly quiz somebody, they will say, “Hey, Rinkesh is something else. If he wants it, he wants it.”

Q: How has your family played into the business model?

A: Tremendous. Let’s start with my mom and dad. We were in the business together when we did it.

Q: Are they still working with you now?

A: They don’t work anymore. They enjoy their life. They travel to India and stay there for half of the year and they come back, so they do back and forth. Back then, it was me, Dad, Mom, and Matt. Me and Dad were more guest facing. Matt was still in middle school and then in high school. He helped. He did the desk. Just how I was a 16-year-old doing a desk at a hotel in Opelika, he was that person doing a desk in our hotel in Phenix City.

Q: Now you’re a husband and father, and your kids are going to be first-generation Americans.

A: They are.

Q: What are you teaching them right now? What are you trying to teach a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old?

A: You’d asked me what are the two good things best I do, and I think it’s being a hotelier and being a family man. We don’t have time and our workload is to enjoy anything else, extracurricular or anything like that.

... Going back to answering your question, I think what I’m trying to instill in them is (A) they come from a good family. Moral compasses, what’s good and right, it’s universal, whether you’re from India or you’re from America. Courtesy, politeness, forgiveness. Those things are already there. They’re all hard-wired. I think what we’re trying to do is trying to make sure that they remember where we come from. They keep on embracing our culture and celebrate it. At the same time, more integrations, have more American friends, and they need that. They need that.

Q: This may be an obvious question. You’re a U.S. citizen, right?

A: I am, yes.

Q: When did you become a U.S. citizen?

A: 2007.

Q: What did it mean?

A: I cried.

Q: Why?

A: Chuck, if you remember, I was in India for 16 years. We come from a better-off family. ...

Q: This was your better life?

A: Yes, it is. I had a good life. I’m the kind of guy that does not want to see sorrow in the world, period. That’s who I am. I was young, right? A lot of young people don’t realize that, because they haven’t been put in that position, they’ve been guarded. My kids, they’re not going to know that, but we tell them. We just had a conversation yesterday. It was me and Matt and we’re like, “These kids are getting iPads and they’re only 7 years old. Do they really need an iPad? Should we get them an iPad or should we not get an iPad?” We had a debate over that.

... Again, we were expecting a normal, good life, and we’re beyond that. It’s overwhelming for me to have that kind of success. That’s why I think it’s not the confidence, and that’s why we have so much discipline, is we can’t mess up. We just can’t afford to mess up.

Q: What kind of pressure comes with that?

A: Tremendous amount of pressure, man. You have investors, you have team members. If we go belly up, 450 people are going to look for a job. I’m never worried about losing a house. I’m worried about them. You’re worried about them. You’re worried about investors’ money. It’s up late.

This story was originally published October 1, 2016 at 8:55 PM with the headline "Rinkesh Patel: ‘It was all about having that American dream’."