Motel Industry Turmoil Blocks Indian-American Path to Prosperity

Davin Patel’s parents ran a 20-room Holiday Motel in rural Georgia when he was growing up. The years he spent shadowing them as they went about their daily business, from checking in guests to tidying rooms, became the foundation for his own career as a motel manager. But none of this on-the-job training, nor any of his college classes, prepared Patel for a pandemic.

The phone at his Country Inn & Suites in Fairburn, Ga., began ringing almost nonstop in mid-March as guests rushed to cancel reservations. When nightly occupancy dipped to 40%, he shut down the top floor of the 74-room property and reduced staffing, while he and his wife, Nidhi, took turns doing laundry and manning the front desk behind a newly installed sneeze guard. “I can’t sit here and panic,” says Patel, 36, who’s also a partner in two properties in Alabama: a Red Roof Inn in Birmingham and a new Best Western in Brewton. “If the time was to panic, it was a month ago. Now we have to find a solution.”