Friday, September 04, 2009
Hotel owner shares story of success
Jay Patel
Priscilla Richardson is columnist The Botetourt View. You can contact her at 981-3430 or via e-mail.
Priscilla Richardson
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Jay Patel owns and runs three motels near Exit 150 on the Interstate 81. He does have one piece of advice: "Don't go into the motel business now, the economy is bad." He started when the economy was good, however, meaning he's already in it. So he's waiting for travel to pick up to fill his properties.
Patel's latest motel sits on U.S. 11 just north of the Pilot station. A brand new Holiday Inn Express, it differs from his motel that used to carry that name. The new one has interior corridors, not the old style where the room doors open to the outside. His former Holiday Inn Express, just across the highway, is now a Quality Inn. He describes it as a mid-scale motel. He also owns the Super 8, an economy motel, on U.S. 220 on the other side of the interstate.
His life has brought him a long way from his start. He was born in India in 1945 to a farming family. Everything changed for him when his father went to England in 1954, taking a factory job. "I came in 1959 when I was 14. I went to school in England for six months, then I was 15 and had my first job. I've been working ever since. I only got an eighth grade education."
Patel's first job, at a newspaper, entailed looking after vehicles and trucks. When he got old enough, he took a driving job with the same paper, the Evening Telegraph, in Coventry, England. After spending 12 years and nine months at one job, he moved to Canada in 1971.
Once there, he branched out into running his own business. "I worked for the Toronto paper as an independent contractor, with my own boxes, selling newspapers." He worked day and night, seven days a week. A typical weekday consisted of taking the papers to the boxes at 2 a.m., back home at 7 to take his wife to her work on a factory assembly line and son to school. Then back to work for the rest of the day.
Not afraid to work or to live economically, Patel accumulated capital. "All my friends [in the USA] said, 'come here and buy a hotel.' It was easy then, and financing was available. So I came with $45,000 down and bought a 21 room motel and financed it for ten years."
He quickly sold that, moved to Phoenix, Ariz., and bought another motel with a restaurant. He didn't care for the climate there; it was too hot. And he didn't like the restaurant business, either, which he now avoids. He sticks with renting rooms, because "I can always clean a room."
Then through a business broker Patel came to Virginia and bought a motel on Williamson Road. He sold that in 1992 and came to Botetourt. He bought land where the Quality Inn now stands, built a motel on it and sold part of the land for the Cracker Barrel restaurant. Also he purchased the Super 8 as a going concern. The new Express? "I didn't plan to run two but I have to do it to have my business and grow."
Patel's two sons, one born in England and the second in Canada, went to school and then graduated from Tech. "Because I am not an educated man, I wanted my kids to have a good education." He and his wife, also from India, are both citizens and he lets you know she does not work now, except to cook Indian food for him. A real Botetourt success story, with an Indian flavor.
