Manga Hotel Group is an impressive venture by any measure, with 5,800 rooms across 31 hotels and 3,000 purpose-built rental units. Some of those hotels and residences are ones that Manga Hotel Group has acquired, while others it has built itself. It is also affiliated with well-known hotel brands including Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, and the InterContinental Hotel Group. Manga also has involvement in expanding into several high-rise building developments with approximately 500 units each, in various stages of construction and operation.
“We have been in this business for a very long time,” says Sukhdev Toor, founder and CEO of Manga Hotel Group. “I started the business 34 years ago, when there were not as many big franchises as there are now.”
Toor has mastered the hotel industry floor by floor, building on that foundation of knowledge of the industry to the heights Manga Hotel Group has reached today. He started out working in one small hotel, and there he grew the business to nine hotels by 1997. From there, Toor began building hotels in 1998.
“The Hampton Inn that we built and opened in 1999 was our first construction and the first Hampton Inn in Canada, and now the Hampton chain has more than 3,000 hotels worldwide,” Toor says. “We have built hotels from the ground up for Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt and the InterContinental Hotel Group.”
In addition to building, Manga has grown through acquisition. The Group has acquired 8 new hotels in the last twelve months, opened two new properties and is continuously renovating properties in its existing portfolio with constant capital reinvestment.
Growing and Learning
As Manga Hotel Group has evolved, it has also entered new territory, learning lessons along the way. For a brief period, the Group ran limited-service hotels such as Comfort Inns, before the Group underwent a streamlining process to focus on upscale brands, the kind of hospitality facilities that have a high barrier of entry for other builders.
It is this ability to recognise and move with the times that has made Manga Hotel Group a leader in the sector. Currently, what makes Manga Hotel Group a real trendsetter in the field is its approach to improving the sustainability of the hospitality industry.
“We were the first hotel developer in Canada to be LEED-certified which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design,” Toor tells us proudly. “Right now we are building hotels in downtown Toronto with solar panels and geothermal power. Hotels with lower carbon emissions.”
Speaking on the Group’s expansion outside of Ontario, Toor states “In Canada, we have opened up brand new horizons. We took the first Hilton hotel to the province of Nova Scotia, where we own eight hotels now, four of which are Hilton properties. We also brought the first Hilton hotel to the province of Newfoundland and have two Hilton properties there.”
While the company has always led the way, there have also been challenges to overcome.
“There are various challenges when you try to grow any business,” Toor is the first to point out. “You have to not only be aware of your own financial situation, but also be careful about where the economy is going on a worldwide scale. We have seen recessions. We have seen the financial crash in 2008. You need to be resilient and sustainable to have a long-term strategy that works.”
Covid-19 presented a similar challenge for the hospitality industry, coming on very suddenly. During lockdown, the rules were changing rapidly and hotels struggled to keep up. It was a challenging time, and even as lockdown lifted, hotels had to continue to adapt to a constantly changing regulatory environment.
“Post-Covid we were not allowed to go into the guests’ rooms to clean. Since then we have trained our staff to adapt their cleaning routines to suit the customers’ preferences,” Toor tells us. “We are very careful in sanitising the rooms.”
To adhere to the standards that Manga Hotel Group holds itself to, it needs staff who are fully on board with those standards and the culture that Manga Hotel Group has built.
“Our staff are crucial,” Toor says. “Without them, we cannot be successful. We have incentive programs and benefits. We retain our staff by giving them bonuses. We look after each other. It is very hard to find good people and retain them. That is an important part of the whole business.”
Under Toor’s vision, Manga Hotel Group has become a completely vertically integrated business, from land acquisition, to construction, to hotel operations and management.
“We don’t manage for third parties,” Toor says. “Our head office covers all accounting, property management, and construction, all in-house.”
The Journey Not the Destination
As Toor steers Manga Hotel Group towards its future, it is clear that he is planning ahead. But he is also conscious that the correct approach is to move one step at a time. The Group has already performed exceptionally well with other prestigious brands. Now Toor is planning to launch his own.
“There is no final destination, you just continue growing,” he tells us. “We have recently launched our new TOOR Hotel in Toronto, but soon it will be coming to some of the biggest cities in the world. We are working to create our own brand and hotel collection under which we are building three new hotels in downtown Toronto, before moving into other markets like London, New York and Chicago. We are looking for opportunities to acquire and build.”
Toronto is historically a great place to launch a hotel brand. As Toor points out, this is also where the Four Seasons first emerged, starting on the same street as TOOR Hotel. It is the perfect location to meet the needs of a rapidly changing customer segment.
“Consumers are looking for different experiences these days. Boutique style, upscale hotels for cities,” Toor shares. “Starting a brand is about consistency and service. Brands can start from anywhere these days. So we are creating a niche product for the market in the upscale lifestyle segment and growing that into major cities.”
The TOOR Hotel in Toronto will soon be just one of four hotels in the TOOR Hotel collection, a new, fundamentally Canadian brand.
“There is a uniqueness to Canadian hospitality that is recognised globally,” Toor says. “That, combined with the legacy of operational excellence we have built, is what we are rooting our eponymous hotel brand in before taking it worldwide.”
That legacy is not just the legacy of the company, however. It is also the legacy of Sukhdev Toor himself.
