
How Indian Americans Came to Run Half of All U.S. Motels - walterbell
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture-exploration/2018/09/south-asia-america-motels-immigration/
======
stephengillie
This model has led to success for other immigrant groups in other industries.

> _Many followed his advice. “They would give each other handshake loans—no
> collateral, no payment schedule, just pay when you can,” Doshi explains.
> Once a family purchased a motel, they would live there, and the family
> members would do all the tasks needed to run it, from cleaning rooms to
> checking in guests. That helped keep costs down, and profits went toward
> acquiring new motels. By the 1980s Gujaratis had come to dominate the
> industry._

The "killer app" here appears to be a lack of resources beyond established
relationships. Because of this, whole families were willing to spend their
time doing work that most Americans feel is not worth their time.

~~~
sidlls
It's not (just) that most Americans feel these jobs aren't worth their time.
There is a very strong individualist streak in American culture and a very
strong taboo against lending friends or family members money for any reason.

There are plenty of American families who have relations who could easily help
bootstrap a profitable small business in the way described here. It just
doesn't happen that way very often.

Instead the typical means to wealth is inheritance or luck of birth providing
access to investment capital (not loans) and business connections. For every
WhatsApp there's a dozen or more Microsofts and Facebooks (Gates and
Zuckerberg both benefitted from the immense social and financial capital their
families could provide).

~~~
sumeetjain
_> There is a very strong individualist streak in American culture and a very
strong taboo against lending friends or family members money_

I think the individualist streak in American culture is better shown by people
being unwilling to seek help from friends/family. I might call an
unwillingness to help others (assuming one can afford to do so) _selfishness_
\-- not individualism. But what I have seen in American is, as you said,
_individualism_ : People are prideful and want to create wealth without help.

An interesting clarification: People will more readily accept help from
_strangers_ \-- e.g. a Kickstarter campaign, bank loan, or VC investment
doesn't diminish one's pride in the way that the same support from someone's
parents might.

There's talk elsewhere in this article's comments here about the "killer
feature" that these Indian Americans have. I would argue that the true killer
feature is not even access to zero-interest capital. It's a culture that
actively fights against pride and individualism.

There are surely tradeoffs, but it's hard to deny the power that can come from
children and adults alike all looking to family for help... and seeing that
help not as something which diminishes their power but rather as something
that bolsters it.

~~~
iguy
I think it's much deeper than "individualist streak in American culture".

Western Europe in the last 1000 years or so has been a very unusual place...
one aspect of which is having nuclear families not extended ones. Because
(crudely speaking) the catholic church wished to diminish alternative power
structures, such as clans. This led to an unusually open society, which had
many benefits... with generally higher levels of trust among strangers.

But it has some costs, too. Like not having tight connections for
bootstrapping motels in a foreign land.

~~~
jlg23
Unless you have some references, I'd call this a "nice theory" (to be read
with a British accent).

Spontaneously:

* South America appeared to be more catholic than any Western European or US-American place I've visited, but family and extended family are still a big thing.

* Calvinists seem to be much more "open" than catholics to me.

* Damn, I want the secret recipe that lets me set a policy and enforce it in vast areas (at times without any reliable messenger system) and across _many_ generations, even if my successor comes from a different faction within the catholic church.

~~~
pard68
By Calvinists I assume you are referring to Protestants? Or are you actually
referring to Calvinistic Protestants? Just curious, outside of Christian
circles and history I don't think I have ever seen someone reference
Calvinists.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Might be different in the US, in Europe it's not too uncommon to talk about
calvinists, particularly in certain countries like the Netherlands it's a
well-established term (which is even used there to describe Dutch behavioral
culture, because it's deemed to be so fitting), and separate from other forms
of protestantism.

------
bluedino
>> Once a family purchased a motel, they would live there, and the family
members would do all the tasks needed to run it, from cleaning rooms to
checking in guests. That helped keep costs down, and profits went toward
acquiring new motels.

It is the exact same with convenience stores. Work 12-14 hour days. Only have
other family members work there.

------
CodeCube
If you are interested in these kinds of stories, check out the documentary
[http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/](http://www.thesearchforgeneraltso.com/)

Aside from being specifically about searching for the origin of the general
tso recipe, it talks about how chinese immigrants came to own so many chinese
restaurants across the country.

~~~
overcast
Just recommended this film today to someone! Definitely worth checking out,
even outside your interest of what General Tso actually is.

------
amyjess
I find this interesting, because my family used to take road trips all the
time (annually in the '90s, less often since then), and we mostly stayed in
motels that were part of national chains like Hampton Inn, La Quinta, Holiday
Inn Express, Fairfield by Marriott, Best Western, etc., and I honestly don't
recall the staff being Indian (since we mostly travelled through the
Southeast, most of the employees we interacted with were black). I guess the
owners could have been, but that would mean they're hiring people outside of
family.

I'm wondering if this article applies to just independent motels or if it also
includes franchises of the national chains (at least, I assume the national
chains use a franchise model). I'd be honestly surprised if independent motels
were a full half of the number of motels in the US, since the chains are
_everywhere_.

~~~
DhirubhaiPatel
90s is far to early. The anti-asian immigration laws were repealed only in
1965 [1] only to benefit Poles and Italians but then also ended up benefiting
Indians and Chinese. Many of them came to USA during that time and toiled
mostly in menial jobs. It was only around late 80s that they had gathered
enough influence to buy motels and such and this motel takeover was much more
visible during early 2001s. In the Obama era recession the property prices
dropped further and many Indians purchased even more motels.

Also the Patel community is not really into high end motels like Hampton Inn.
They are into Motel 6, Super 8, Choice Hotels, etc.

[1]

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phakding
It's common enough that urban dictionary has a definition for Potel (patel +
m/hotel)

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aloukissas
On the same note, I recently watched this video covering how Cambodian
immigrants ended up running so many donuts shops, especially here in SoCal:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQLtRRe5EBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQLtRRe5EBc)

~~~
hnzix
And Tippi Hedren bringing Vietnamese refugees into the nail salon business.
51% of nail technicians in the United States and 80% in California are of
Vietnamese descent.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32544343)

------
mirimir
I became aware of the Gujarati hospitality empire some decades ago, when my
work involved community organizing in the rural US. I was finding that just
about all the old motels on state highways were run by Gujaratis. And when I'd
become a regular, some would share about their experience. And would invite my
friends and me for dinner, which was heaven. Especially given that the
alternatives were typically burgers, steaks or fried chicken.

------
sophiac
This book provides the investment philosophy behind the Patel success and how
it can apply in other realms.

The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns by Mohnish
Pabrai

The author is an investment manager with a focused value strategy.

~~~
hoodwink
+1 Dhandho Investor describes this same story and the philosophy / technique
to replicate this approach in your own life

[https://www.amazon.com/Dhandho-Investor-Low-Risk-Method-
Retu...](https://www.amazon.com/Dhandho-Investor-Low-Risk-Method-
Returns/dp/047004389X)

------
igravious
I look forward to the next National Geographic article in this series where
they document in detail how American Jews came to run a substantial proportion
of U.S. media!

edit: I need to put this more judiciously :) run => exercise control over

------
cryptozeus
I am from gujarat, do not own any motel. In my experience I can definitely
believe this to be true. Personally know so many people heho owns motels. I am
shocked about the 50% though!

~~~
jessaustin
No one who travels and stays in small-to-medium-sized hotels is shocked by
this. I have a complaint, however. We have so many Indian-Americans
distributed all over the nation, and it is still fairly difficult to find good
Indian food outside big cities.

~~~
balls187
Good Indian food doesn't exist in the US.

Take a trip to BC, or the UK, and you'll see what I mean.

~~~
ahstilde
This is incredibly diminutive of Indian cuisine in America.

The Bay Area itself has Zareen's (Michelin guide) and Rasa (Michelin star).

Yes, the UK has much more phenomenal Indian food, but to say the US has none
is wrong.

~~~
th1nkdifferent
I'm sorry Michelin star means squat for Indian food. I have tried both and
they are pretty crappy.

------
known
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakireddy_Bali_Reddy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakireddy_Bali_Reddy)
exploited the Indian caste system to bring young Indian women and girls to
Berkeley, California, From 1986 to 1999, he and his family members and
associates forced them into servitude and sexual slavery and to work in his
Indian cuisine restaurants

------
JohnJamesRambo
Can someone tell me why the surname of Patel is so predominant in the hotel
owners? The article doesn't really explain why.

~~~
newhotelowner
Patel + Hotel owner here.

We are from Indian state Gujarat. Patel is the most common last name in
Gujarat.

90+% of Patels I know immigrated to the USA through chain migration. My dad's
sister-in-law's sister (A) & her husband came to the USA in last 60s early
70s. Sister (A) applied for the immigration visa for my dad's sister-in-law.
My dad's sister-in-law and my dad's brother immigrated to the USA in the late
70s. My dad's brother applied immigration visa for all his brothers & sisters.
My dad & his family (including me) immigrated to the USA in the late 90s.

Roughly 200+ of us were migrated to the USA because of the sister (A). Half of
them speaks & understand very very basic English. They only have limited
options for the job. Mom&Pop kind of motel is easy to run, only requires
talking to a few people and its mostly same every day. So they work their butt
off for a few years and buy a small motel.

Those who can speak little better English end up working at someone else's
hotel when they move to the USA, and from there with the friend/family's help
they buy their motel.

~~~
0xcafecafe
>>Patel is the most common last name in Gujarat.

Fellow Gujju here. It is "one" of the most common last names in Gujarat.
Probably it might be the most common last name of Gujjus outside Gujarat but I
doubt it is so inside the state.

------
rurban
The 50% figure is not ownership, but managing. The article misses several
important points why the Gujariti could take over the whole south and west in
all cheap hotels. The main reason is a special Visa execption, very similar to
the Chinese cook visa exception. Family members can easily come over and work
there. So they can undercut all costs in running a hotel, esp. with Central
American room cleaning. The big chains saw this advantage and put a Gujariti
manager everywhere. They replaced room cleaning step by step and are also
doing the small repairs by themselves. They have a strong community to help
each other out. Biggest problem is room cleaning though. It's a different
experience, it smells. Who knows what kind of chemicals they use. For sure the
wrong ones. When they advance to $120 hotels is it getting better though, then
they can afford proper room cleaning again.

------
pixi02139
So what else is new? How come every other cop - especially in the North east -
is named Dennehy or O'Reilly; every other landscaping firm is owned by people
with surnames like Caruso or Zanatta; every other construction firm in
California (esp. SFBA) is owned by people with surnames like Monahan and
Shanahan.

Ethnic professions are nothing new, and part and parcel of American immigrant
history. Just another chapter...

------
duxup
My understanding is that immigrants often have a high rate of
entrepreneurship.

It's always nice to hear about people coming to the US and not just taking a
chance coming to the US, but also taking advantage of those freedoms to take
the risk of starting a business and the massive amount of work that it takes
to do so.

~~~
iamgopal
The environment back home is so fu __d up, that , whole family working 12
hours a day seems like real stress reliever. My uncle who went USA and doing
the motel thing, used to have business in India. i.e. they were well to do
also in India and went there not for more money but lifestyle and education
opportunities that India can not provide.

------
anad7
While it's certainly true that people from Gujarat are business minded, I have
observed that they are equally narrow minded, especially when it comes to
selecting whom they work with and they almost always select a fellow Gujarati.

I have personal experience with this, I had a Gujarati classmate and we had
plans for starting up after our college, he later went on to work for his
brother in law (who you already guessed it worked in the hospitality
industry), he only told me later when I asked that he was pressured by his
family to work with them exclusively. You may think that this is a one off
example, but it's not, nearly all people I came across had similar mindset.

Also they contributed largely to the election of Modi as a PM in India, who is
also ( __drumroll __) a Gujarati, now this may be good or bad depending on how
you look at it.

After living in western countries for well over 50 years (calling themselves
American, Canadian and British etc), they ooze pride about their
entrepreneurial heritage; but they still vote and contribute money towards
electing a man whose past screams bloody murder and that is plain hypocrisy!

------
Ramesh535
Gujus(Indian Gujarat people) are not just in USA but even within India they
are mostly money lenders and resellers. Most Gujus do not stay in Gujarat,
they are business people(buying and selling only no production)

------
RickJWagner
Awesome. I love stories where hard work pays off. Hats off to this family.

------
JoeAltmaier
Anybody have any real statistics on this? <citation>

~~~
gnahckire
I have a datapoint.

I went to university w/ someone's whose family ran a bunch of hotels & motels
in the San Jose area.

His surname was Patel.

------
dalbasal
_" No boundary existed between work and life."_

I'm some senses, this is a story about an older way of doing things.. or a
capitalism that has existed at a smaller scale alongside the I
understand/liberal system we generally think of as capitalism (or socialism,
really).

That is, things work by convention, affiliation and duty. They don't work
through formal agreements, roles and contracts.

Family is a true economic unit, with productive capacity, credit potential and
such. Affiliations with other families are important.

The ability of one hotelier family to assess an informal loan to another
one... Its not necessarily worse than a Banks's.

------
DhirubhaiPatel
Gujarati here. Our success in Motel and Gas Station industry can be attributed
to the following. The same model then also can be seen in tech industry. I
have explained below :

"Ability to establish trust while bypassing all the conventional channels."

Coming from a socialist country like India to USA I noticed that transaction
costs in USA are damn too low simply because of the trust factor. There is no
two factor auth each time you do a credit card transaction, you can do self
checkouts at Walmart etc. etc. Many of first world citizens might take this
for granted but these factors give a huge boost to economy. There are more
transactions and less wealth is destroyed just to enforce a contract.

We Gujjus take this to the next level in USA. Consider John Smith decides to
run a gas station. He has to appoint a 24x7 attendant at say $10 per hour. So
he has to spend $240 per day just for the person. Assuming the profit margin
per gallon is $0.15 he needs to see around 100 cars filling 16 gallons before
that cost can be earned back. Not to mention these attendants steal cash and
other stuff from the gas station store often too. John Smith then hires Jose
who is an illegal Mexican at $5 per hour. Jose steals his cash one day and is
never seen again or is caught by ICE and deported. Or John Smith sticks to the
law and bleeds $240 per day.

Now Dhirubhai Patel buys the same gas station. He makes a phone call and finds
another Gujju student who is currently on F1 and legally can not earn and is
paying heavy rent in bay area. He agrees to man his gas station at night and
sleep in there too. He saves on rent and takes literally no salary until he
completes his masters. Dhirubhai saves Around $100 more on this. Also the
gujju students is much less prone to stealing and cheating and on other hand
is more thankful to Dhirubhai. After completing his masters this kid joins a
reputed tech company and later employs Dhirubhai's daughter as an intern.
Everyone wins.

I see a lot of hate for Indian tech workers among white nativists tech workers
on apps like Team Blind and also on twitter (search for HR392 on twitter).
They correctly point out that Indians have been succeeding at a much greater
rate than natives. They claim that Indian managers tend to hire Indian
employees even in top firms like Google etc.

That might be true as Indians quickly build trust among each other. It is
common for a new H1B from India to work for a startup at least for 2-3 years
just because founders helped him come to USA even though salary is lower (I
did this). Both my founders were Indians and the company was successfully
acquired. I left within 6 months of acquisition to join one of the FANGs.

Note: I think the lack of proper deterministic path to green card actually
forces smaller ethnic groups to huddle together instead of being more
individualistic. This in some way prevents assimilation. There are over 200K
tech H1Bs who are here for decade or more and yet wont get their green cards.
A lot of them would feel safer in companies where their manager is Indian, CEO
is Indian etc. than a general white owned company and might be willing to work
for less for the safety of job and presence in USA. Same goes for motels,
farming, gas stations and many other businesses which are being completely
cornered by Indian-Americans.

~~~
balls187
> I think the lack of proper deterministic path to green card actually forces
> smaller ethnic groups to huddle together instead of being more
> individualistic. This in some way prevents assimilation.

Every ethnic immigrant group huddles together, regardless of visa status. That
is basic human nature.

------
sunpatel
As a second generation patel I can say entrepreneurship runs in our blood.
Although my dad's hotel did not work out, I've never had a full time job with
benefits and I've spent 11 years trying to build iorad.com.

~~~
anotheramala
Cool app idea

------
rblion
Story of my life.

------
justboxing
The story totally checks out. I moved from Boston to San Francisco in 2006,
did a cross country drive. Back then we only had flip phone, so I would use my
laptop and The Microsoft Streets software with a GPS. Every day, around 3 PM,
I would pull in into the parking lot and locate a Motel 30 or 40 miles ahead
using the GPS and Streets software, and call and book a room.

8 out of 11 motels I stayed in were owned and run by Gujjus (Gujaratis,
originally from the state of Gujarat in India). I was really surprised by
this, because until then, I was only used to seeing East Indians working
either in Tech or in Gas Stations, 7/11s.

Being a 1st generation Indian immigrant myself, almost always the owners would
relate to me and tell me their immigrant story. And yes, almost all of them
said the same thing the story mentions, i.e. borrowing money from family to
buy a run-down / cheap motel business, live in it and work on it. One of them
even shared their Gujju dinner with me as I'd arrive late and all the
restaurants were closed in the Area ( Eureka, CA)...

Not all of them carried the business forward though. 1 guys son was working to
be an Airforce Pilot and another's daughter was going to Law School. As told
by their fathers neither one wanted anything to do with the Motel business,
but they put in their work as kids, working at the motel while off school and
such.

After moving to San Francisco, I met another Indian-American "Patel" , born to
Indian immigrant parents. He too had a family run motel in Portland and would
tell me stories of how everyone in the family had to pitch in to make it work.
Gujjus are hard working people and I really admire their work ethics and grit.

~~~
brandall10
My last ex was Gujarati and her father owned a Holiday Inn Express and a Days
Inn. We both worked remote at the time and a good chunk of our relationship
was spent staying at various hotels under the IHG banner for the "owner's
rate" (a small denomination less than $1).

Their network went well beyond any particular industry though. The first
family friend to come to this country ended up in Houston in the early 70s,
quickly accumulated wealth by innovating accounting techniques for big oil. He
sponsored the next wave, which included her father who started as a nuclear
plant engineer and travelled around the country for a couple decades before
moving into finance then hospitality.

Each successive wave would sponsor others - they all were relatively
successful in India but came here to be executives at tech companies,
surgeons, professors, real estate investors, etc. They really took care of
each other.

While the family did much of what was mentioned in the article, including
living at the Days Inn for a couple years at one point, it didn't mention
anything about partnership stakes in these properties. That seemed to be a big
thing, or at least I had the impression that diversifying property portfolios
was common. Her father owned his properties outright but that was because he
bought his partners out during the financial collapse in 2009. When we last
talked 2 years back, he was looking to acquire new partners and invest in
other properties.

As you say, there was a tension to bring the children in but they had little
interest in moving to a place in a so-so part of Florida - the children were
well educated, travelled, cultured etc and preferred to live in big cities. My
ex and I did grudgingly discuss it as being an option if we started a family.

------
CodeSheikh
Is the author generalizing other South Asian immigrants as Indian Americans?
Or is it factual that Indian-Americans do own 50% of motels in the USA?
Because I have seen a lot of Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and even Arabs owning
motel businesses across the USA. I am not cleared about this just from reading
the article alone.

~~~
sandworm101
I think it safe to say they mean "Indian American" in a racial rather than
national context, akin to "African American". So I'd take it to include people
who have ethnic ties to the entire Indian subcontinent, including Pakistan and
Bangladesh.

As a Canadian who has lived many years in the US, the casual use of racial
descriptors still shocks me. I find is very discomforting to be asked my race
on forms, to see national news talk about how different ethnic groups feel
about this or that.

~~~
nyolfen
indians were categorized as white for govt purposes in the US until the late
70s when they petitioned the government for a census category so they could
benefit from affirmative action. same deal as the new MENA category

~~~
amyjess
Indians don't have their own census category now, either. They're officially
considered Asian; the census lumps them in with East Asians and Southeast
Asians.

~~~
nyolfen
1980 Census

This year added several options to the race question, including Vietnamese,
Indian (East), Guamanian, Samoan, and re-added Aleut.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_Un...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States_Census)

------
jiveturkey
TLDR: via aristocracy (a good version of it), more or less. IOW, the hard work
of generations prior, with "compounded interest" of the hard work of each
generation since.

This is definitely worth reading. This short and simple article has lots of
lessons.

