#walkforIndia - The Journey "My Why and Covid19" Part 1

On Monday the 20th of July 2020 I set off to walk from Zurich main station to Geneva main station in a chefs jacket to show dissatisfaction with the world governments fiscal approach in general from a personal perspective and to try to raise awareness and funds to support hospitality workers in India who have been pushed to the poverty line through job losses linked to the covid-19 pandemic. This walk is the furthest I have ever walked in my life and is likely to remain so.

The Why?

We know that the Pandemic has shaken the world, and to be clear no one is to blame. The Pandemic has financially hurt business owners and people from all walks of life, this virus crosses all geographical barriers without mercy.

The hospitality industry is about people, personal connections and our Industry has been hit very hard because of the lockdowns and the social distancing. This pandemic has driven fear and governments across the world have been slow to react and their approach to stimulate the economies has mostly only helped the stock markets which have had all time highs as debt bonds are being bought up by the central banks. In the front end of all of this millions of hospitality businesses have closed their doors and many for good.

Because of the fact that government funding has not reached grass root businesses millions of people have lost their jobs across the world and the ones that have remained employed in our hospitality industry have had to accept a 20 to 30% pay cut at the management level and the newly advertised roles have reduced salaries compared to pre-covid levels, yet with greater expectations and pressure than ever before.

Sadly we have seen that many women have lost their jobs compared to men and for many companies any organisational purpose and why framework that was based on their employees and corporate imposed culture seems to have been sacrificed in the race for the companies own survival,

I think it is worth noting that many high profile industry leaders in general seem to have lost their opinions and voices now, especially as the world is looking for clear and transparent direction. I think this is both disappointing and sad to see.

I am wondering if this is because we have become overly focused on being politically correct and because of this no one dares standup for fear of standing out?

For me true leadership is about surrounding yourself with smarter people than you, these people will compensate your weaknesses and will be challenging you and through this melting pot of intellect, conversations and experiences better options will present themselves to choose from, with you as the leader always knowing that any final decision made and its consequences sits with you and there is no one else to blame if things don't work as you had planned for.

Many companies now make decisions by committee which I think has caused leaders to lose agility, their own identity and in many cases they have become risk adverse and suffer from group think.

Back to the Pandemic

In America people have had the chance of stimulus checks in Europe furlough is offered, however in some European countries employers have opted for redundancies because add-ons such as pension, schooling, employer contributions are not compensated for by the furlough payments. Nevertheless the people who have been let go in most European countries live in country where there is a social security welfare system that helps people with financial support while they are out of work.

In some countries people have been made redundant without pay, of course this does include the Middle East, some parts of Europe and Asia, Africa and in India.

While I accept that there are other countries other than India that need support, I have been connected to India through my job with Hyatt and prior to joining Hyatt I worked on a management business score card project developed in India.

This meant that I knew the who and how to ensure that any charity fund raising event I worked on I would be able to personally be confident that the funds went to the impacted individuals in hospitality directly and to the people that needed the help and support the most.

I did look into NGOs and while they would accept the money raised, the funds could not be directly sent to specific people in hospitality and therefore I felt I needed to organise a charity event on my own, hoping I could gain buy-in from people and some corporations.

Just before the Pandemic had really started to come to Europe I was listening to leaders and managers from across Europe and many were saying we will wait and see what happens.

I am not a fan of this approach and felt I should set up an online forum on LinkedIn called the food and beverage support forum this was to try and create a platform where people could learn together, share content, create ideas and be part of a hospitality community which ultimately could have a voice for our industry without conditions. We now have almost 12400 members and this will be a focus for myself and the people who have joined me to try and make this forum a genuine place of support regardless of where you work in hospitality. The people supporting the forum are Martin Jones , Katrin Melle , Alison Styles , Rene Philippe Vassilliere , Alex Melle , Jose Nunez , Dejan Popadic and we are about to launch kitchen conversations with Shane Rushbrook and Robert Clark from legend house.

Because of the food and beverage support forum I started to receive a lot of messages from people in India who said they had lost their jobs and were running out of money, Actually the major thing these people wanted from me was for me to help them get a job. Sadly I am not in a position to do this and started to think how I could help these people from our hospitality industry.

The connection

I came up with the idea of walking from Zürich to Geneva as I wanted to give a reason for people and corporations to donate to help support Hospitality workers impacted by covid19 and for there to be a link back to India.

I had read once that Gandhi had been to Switzerland and that he had visited the Victoria hall in Geneva although times and circumstances were different to me this was a great connection and destination for me to aim for when walking from Zurich.

Within India itself the walk attracted a lot of attention thanks to Pratiti Rajpal, the walk was covered by several papers on online news platforms. Here are some links to the coverage

Peak Life

Hotelier India

The Hindu

Although there has been good coverage in India, this did not result in any financial donations from any corporations or hotel groups within India or external of India of which I had hoped for.

The biggest benefit of all from this initiative is that I think we have raised awareness that there is an issue in India with regards to hospitality workers and a lack of financial support and that many are heading to poverty and I am hoping that this will result in more people providing support focused towards hospitality workers based in India in the coming days and weeks ahead.

You can still donate

It is still not too late to support and donate the go fund me page is here, I created a facebook account to share my journey which is here

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has donated and for all of the positive feedback and support. It has been truly an amazing experience and one I will never forget.

Part 2

In part 2 tomorrow I will share the journey and post the actual kilometres walked and some selected videos and photos, and in part three I will talk about the next steps to help people using the money raised and what else I have planned to support Indian hospitality workers.