Avari Group Of Companies Pvt. Ltd.

Avari Hotels International is Karachi based multinational hospitality management company

which operates five properties in Pakistan, two in Dubai and one in Toronto.

Hotels are the core business of Avari.

It is a single member private limited company.

It has no shares in hotel chains however it has its strategic partners in its boutique hotels chain
and real estate properties such as flats and plazas.

Strategic Partners.
 The British Business Centre.
 Canada Pakistan Chamber of Commerce. (CPCoC)
 Mehmood Group of Industries.

Headoffice.
Its headoffice is located at Karachi in Beach Luxury Karachi.

Type of industry
Avari is a service industry.

Services provided by this industry are in the following:

1. Accommodation.
 Guestrooms including
 Junior Suites
 Deluxe Suites
 Non smoking rooms available

2. Hotel services.
 Complimentary Airport Shuttle
 Fully equipped business center
 Conference & Banqueting Rooms
  Laundry / Dry Cleaning
 Rent-A-Car office
 Complimentary Wi-Fi access in all rooms & public areas.
3. Dinning.
 Dynasty (Chinese)
 Kim’s (24 hours Pakistani & Continental cuisine and buffet)
 The Tollington (Outdoor Pakistani BBQ)
 24-hour in room dining.

4. Wellness & Recreation.

 Jogging track
 Table Tennis
 Large gardens
 Gym
Along with hoteling services it has also come up as real estate ventures such as Avari plazas and
ATA (Avari Travel Agencies).

Avari follows neither vertical nor horizontal integration because they purchase their raw materials,
furniture, and all the products from their vendors.

Founder Of Avari.
Mr.Dinshaw Avari belonging to a Parsi family founded the Avari company in 1944.

He firstly build Beach Luxury Hotel in Karachi and initially started with 35 rooms that were
insufficient and soon that hotel was grown into 80 rooms hotel.

Mr.Dinshaw was first in Pakistan who introduced Buffet style dinner.

After Mr.Dinshaw Avari the hotel chain is owned by the Avari family and currently led
by Byram D. Avari (son of Dinshaw Avari) his sons Dinshaw Avari and Xerxes Avari.

Board Of Directors.
 Byram D. Avari (Chairman)
 Xerxes B. Avari (Director)
 Dinshaw B. Avari (Director)
 Philippe Belhay (Chief Operating Officer)
 Santosh Hari (Corporate Director Administration)
 Saeed Ahmed Patel (Corporate Director Finance)
 Awais Khan (Corporate Director Human Resources)
 Syed Amir Iqbal (Corporate Director IT)
 Hissamuddin Yusuf (Director Group Purchase)
 Shahzad Zafar (Corporate Director Safety & Security)

History Of Avari.
It was founded in 1944 and it keeps on expanding its business till now.

Recently Avari started to operate its Awari Express Tower in Multan on 5 October 2018.

Its chain of hotels is discussed briefly as follows:

1. Beach Luxury Hotel Karachi.

The 80 room, 3-star "Beach Luxury" Hotel at Karachi is situated on 24,000 sq.yards of land
along the seafront. This was the first hotel to open in 1948 after Partition

2. Avari Towers Karachi.

The 240 room, newly renovated, full service 5-Star "Avari Towers" Hotel at Karachi is a
recipient of Consumer Choice Award 2008. This is the first 5-Star Hotel on the main road from
Karachi Airport and the tallest hotel in Pakistan.

3. Avari Lahore.

The 188 room, full service 5-Star Deluxe "Avari Lahore" Hotel is situated on 48,000 sq. yards
of land in the city center of Lahore, abutting The Mall Road. Avari Lahore is the recipient of 6
consecutive World Travel Award for the Leading Hotel in Pakistan.

4. Avari Dubai.

The 178-room, newly renovated, full service, 4-Star Deluxe "Avari Dubai" Hotel in UAE with
24 Suites in Deira, next to the fabled Dubai Clock Tower.

5. Avari Al-Barsha.
The 78 suites "Avari Suites Al-Barsha" Apartments located just behind the Mall of the Emirates
at Dubai has all 5-Star facilities.

6. Avari Multan.

In Multan it has its two buildings one is Boutique residence and other in Avari Tower . It has
total 87 rooms.

Other Companies Of Avari.

 Avari Plaza Karachi.

"Avari Plaza at Karachi" is a 150,000 sq. feet Commercial Complex adjacent to the Avari
Towers Hotel. The tenants are prime Multinationals like UniLever, Deutsche Bank, National
Bank of Pakistan, United Bank Limited, Dubai Islamic Bank, American Airlines and a number
of other prestigious Institutions.
 Avari Plaza Lahore.
The "Avari Plaza at Lahore" is a 33,000 sq.ft. Commercial Complex, adjacent to the Avari
Lahore Hotel.
 Spencer And Company Pakistan Limited.
"Spencer and Company (Pakistan) Limited" in 1948 was the first company listed on the Karachi
Stock Exchange and was delisted through a Share Buyout in 2004. This is a Holding, Investment
and Real Estate Management Company.

 "Avari Travel Agencies (Pvt) Ltd.

"Avari Travel Agencies (Pvt) Ltd" are the General Sales Agents (GSA) for American Airlines
(AA) for the last 25 years and have won "Outstanding Sales Achievement Awards" for AA
Cargo and Passengers year after year.

Dpartments Of Avari.
Following are some importnat departments of Avari Hotels.
 Finance
 HR
 Training and Development
 Business Development
 F&B (Food and Beverages)
 Kitchen
 Front Office
 Meeting And Events
 PR (Public Relation)
 Structure.
Avari possess a very rigid structure. It works on highly centralized policy and all activities
are reported and controlled from headquarters.
However very small decisions like controlling and hiring rank n file staff (waiters and
sweeperc etc.) is controlled by the deparment heads with the approval of GM and reporting to
headquarters.

HR Functions Of Avari.

Recruitment:
Avari has a strict Policy of not publicizing their vacancies. They do not advertise their vacancies,
neither in newspapers nor on social media websites. Ads in newspapers can be given in very rare
cases, and that too after getting special approval from their head office.

They prefer getting applications for job vacancies through word of mouth, commonly known as
Networking:

 Using website LinkedIn, catering the person with one to one interaction.
 By participating in Job Fares, recently took part in job fare held in BZU.
 They take students from educational Institutes. Mainly COTHM and ITHM.
After generating the initial pool of candidates. The CV`s are shortlisted, screening is done. Then
HR Department schedules the Interviews. When a candidate is being considered for selection,
the decision needs the approval from

1. Department Head
2. Manager HR
3. General Manager
General Manager finalizes the decision.

The system is very centralized so the candidate of Management field have to go through 3-4
interviews for a single post.
Selection:
For appointing Supervisors, the very first approval is from department head, he interviews
and gives remarks then sends it to the General manager, then he interviews the candidate and
gives remarks and sends to the Corporate Head of the respected Department, he after
interviewing it, on call, skype or face to face, whatever way he wants and finalizes, after his
approval it goes to Corporate Head HR who then sends it to Chairman who makes the final
Decision of Hiring.

Same is the case with the appointment of Assistant Department Head.

Hiring:
When all of the approvals are given, the necessary documentation is done and the Medical tests
by Medical Centre are completed the person is hired. But Avari does not take a medically unfit
person, in some cases after all of the steps are cleared and approvals are done, the candidate is
refused because he did not passed the medical test.

1st Day, Orientation is done, presentations about the philosophy, mission and vision, policies and
activities of Avari are delivered to guide the new employee batch. The day is spent with the HR.

2nd Day, Departmental Orientation is given by the respected department, duties are explained.

3rd Day, employee comes into everyday routine.

Training:
Training is institutionalized in Avari. Generally other companies consider training as a division
of HR. But in Avari, there is a separate department for training with separate head and Assistant
Head. There is a Regional Training Manager for Pakistan in Lahore city and a proper 5 people
team whose responsibility is to cater all the trainings for the units in Pakistan. Training Modules
are made for

1. Management Skills
2. Core Skills
3. Technical Skills
4. Departmental Skills
 The team travels from city to city, all over Pakistan for trainings.

The Core Skills training is mandatory and it is carried out by the Department Head and the
other 3 are carried out by the team. Department head carries out these trainings according to
his need. Whenever he feels the need he arranges a session. Time is scheduled and
information to the employees about it is given before 1 week of training and a proper training
is carried out that day.

Trainers Development Program:

There is a team for Trainers Analysis, they Foresee the employees who have the capabilities to
become an effective trainer. They rate their skills out of 10 and after finalizing their points,
nominate them as a potential trainer. Maximum 5 to 6 people are chosen in Training
Development Program. It lasts for 7 days, 9 hours each with a one hour break in between to
relax. Certifications are given and it becomes plus point for the employees for their promotion to
the next position. For this program, mostly Supervisors and Officers are targeted.

Frequency of Training:
Departmental Skills training: Almost on Daily bases.

Management skills Training: Once in three months, quarterly.

Trainers Training: Once in a year.

When a unit is newly established: hiring is done in bulks so more training is needed. More
frequent are the sessions.

Reward System:
 Employee of the month is given bonuses
 Increments
 Reward like Electronic Items, Cars, Bikes, Umrah Packages on (Annual) Town Hall
Meetings

Firing and LayOff:

Turnover of Avari is less than 2%. Firing is something which is discouraged in Avari, and they
don’t like to use the word “firing”, they rather call it as separation of layoff. Rehiring is
something which is encouraged in Avari, it is very much appreciated. If an employee has left
Avari, he cannot comeback till 6 months according to their policy, but after these 6 months have
passed, whenever the employee returns to join, he will get preference over all other candidates.
Avari wants to keep their employees for long term. This is the reason why their turnover is less
than 2%.

Procedure of Firing:
Department Head submits send request to General Manager, General Manager then evaluates it
and sends his final recommendations to Corporate Office, after receiving complete inquiry
report, the separation is done. It happens mostly in rare cases of major offences: Theft,
Harassment, Rendering accounts. They don’t fire on the basis of small mistakes.
Pricing Strategy.

Avari's pricing strategy is based on its competitors. This is because every company has to set the
prices of its products by keeping in regard the price of its competitors product in the same
category. Through this a company can gain and sustain competitive advantage.

In Avari there is regular costing of products and the price is almost same for base level rooms
with respect to its competitors.

Client Retention Rate.

Avari has won the 2018 excellence award and got the highest rating on booking.com site i.e.
8.5/10

It shows that the client retention rate of Avari is quite high.

Marketing of Business.

There are marketing teams present in the head office of Avari. Avari is a brand that is very well
known in Pakistan due to its positive word of mouth. One other reason of fame of avari is that it
is very old brand that was started even before the Independence i.e. 1944.

Strategies.

There are sales offices through which physical sales calls are made, marketing through bill
boards, Social media etc

Most valuable customers.

Most valuable customers of Avari are those who visit them frequently. There are some loyal
customers of Avari that when they use to visit other cities, they first search for Avari hotel for
their stay.

Social media strategy.

Avari mainly focus to physical promotion technique than on social media. They make physical
sales calls while on social media they use only Facebook to market their business and to
announce jobs.
Primary Competitors.

In Multan, Avari consider Ramada Hotel as its primary competitor according to the services
provided by both of them.

Cost to acquire a new customer.

There is no such proper cost of acquiring a new customer because Avari mainly focus on
physical interaction with customers.

Marketing Investment.

Like all other companies, Avari also has a fixed allocated budget that is used in marketing
activities

Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenges that Avari face are the quality of managing the services. If a customer is
remained unsatisfied with its services he would become a unsatisfied customer and can spread
negative word of mouth about Avari and can spoil other customers too.

The other big challenge that it face is to keep the rates according to the market and according to
its competitors

Political and Legal restrictions.

One legal restriction is that security of the hotel should be tight.

Other restriction is that as Avari Multan is in Cantt side so there is a separate license for the
Foreigners. Foreigners who have city license cannot enter the Cantt side so in order to stay at
Avari Hotel Foreigners must have the Cantt license as well as city license.