Here To Stay: How Indian-Born Innkeepers Revolutionized America’s Motels

In midtown Manhattan, 48Lex towers over the crowded street at its feet. The high-rise, luxury hotel offers a singular experience — serving complimentary wine at happy hour — but it’s just one of 52 hotels owned by Hersha Hospitality Trust.

The company, named for founder Hasu P. Shah’s wife, grew from modest origins. At one of the family’s first properties, the 23-room Red Rose Motel in rural Pennsylvania, Shah and his family lived behind the lobby.

“There were a lot of chores to do,” remembers Jay H. Shah, Hasu’s son and current CEO of the company. “There was a lot of grass to cut. We had to skim the pool every morning.”

Now, the Shahs help comprise an impressive statistic: Indian immigrants and their children make up about 1 percent of the U.S. population, but they own roughly half of the motels in the country. And about 70 percent of those motel proprietors can trace their heritage to just one state in India: Gujarat.

In fact, the story of Hasu P. Shah — a former electrical engineer who reinvented himself as an entrepreneur — is common among the Gujarati community, according to Pawan Dhingra, chairman of the sociology department at Tufts University. Read more….