Sam Patel - COO

If you ask HRS Hotels Group’s Chief Operating Officer Samir (Sam) Patel about his career, he is probably as likely to talk about his years in the world of telecommunications, as he is about his years in Hotel Management. Even more than likely, Sam will probably tell you about his time working fast food at “Little Caesar’s”, or as a newspaper boy delivering his hometown Scranton, Pennsylvania newspaper, the “Scranton Times-Tribune.” For Sam, it’s those early jobs, those “kid” jobs that set the foundation for his future in the Hospitality profession.

“That’s where I learned  the value of a dollar, the value of hard labor, and the type of work I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life”, says Sam.  “I am proud I did those jobs, but I knew I had to get busy with education if I was ever going to escape them. Not a single member of my family had ever graduated high school, so a real education was my Father’s dream for his kids and a chance to break the chain.”

In 1988, at the age of 12, Sam had arrived in the United States with his family from Gujarat, India. It was not an easy time.  To accomplish their single mission of education required toil and sweat.  It was the kind of necessary hardship that would place Sam’s Father in a chicken processing plant and his Mother in a sewing factory.  That’s hard work at best, but double tough when one adds the strangeness of a new world, and a huge language barrier.

“My family really sacrificed for me”, remembers Sam. “I didn’t take it casually.  I wanted them to be proud of me so I carried 15- 18 hours of college credit per semester, worked that full time Pizza job, and got my degree in Electronic Engineering from Penn State.”  After spending time with Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, Time Warner & MCI, Sam came to Kentucky in 1998 to join his Brother in Law, Hiten Timbawala in a business venture.

That venture was in the form of a 48 room motel a mile from the main gates of Fort Knox.  It was a decades old catwalk property motel, newly flagged as an Econo Lodge, desperately in need of a new face and image, and a solid Manager to make it all happen.  Hiten was building his dream, HRS Hotels Group. He needed Sam’s penchant for operations and organizational skill to round out the group’s needs.

Sam saw it as an opportunity to own his own business, be his own boss and to build something prideful for his Family. A legacy for his Children, and a legacy to hard work.  Years later, many more hotels built and developed, the Econo Lodge is still a proud part of HRS Hotels. Now over 40 years old, that first Econo Lodge maintains in the top 5% of nationwide Econo Lodge’s by performance numbers. 

“That’s something special, says Sam. That’s what toil, sweat and hard work bring. In the end, it’s not about the size of a business, or the age, or even the location. It’s about the hard work you put into the product. That’s what brings success.”

Like the motto of HRS Hotels Group. Those words, taken from the great Gandhi, “Full effort is full victory”.