CHARLOTTE, NC— Mukesh Mowji, the chairman of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, quickly created a rather candid atmosphere here on the first day of the 2007 AAHOA Annual Convention & Trade Show at the Charlotte Convention Center. As a result, much was revealed about where the association is in terms of its progress and where many of the major franchise companies are in terms of their progress with fairer franchising agreements. Regarding AAHOA’s status, Mowji revealed that following his ascension to the chairman’s position in March of 2006, he had a goal to grow the association’s member ranks to the 10,000 mark. However, he said he quickly discovered last year that AAHOA was not approximately 8,000 members strong, as its database indicated. Rather, it was much closer to between 5,500 and 6,000 members as of March 2006, according to Tarun Patel, AAHOAs treasurer. The outdated database had made it seem as if there were more members, but many were in fact duplicates or members that had not paid their dues. Consequently, reaching the 10,000 mark quickly became unrealistic last year, he said. “We did manage to reach the 7,800 mark by the end of last year,” he noted. “But I was a fool to have 10,000 as the goal. But now that the database has been cleared up, we want to add 12% to 13% new members each year.” Mowji was also forthcoming today about how AAHOA’s by-laws were in need a revision when he came on board as chairman. He revealed that the elected treasurer, who is chosen by AAHOA’s members each year at the annual convention— and who becomes the AAHOA chairman exactly three years later— previously could have in fact been removed by the board of directors at their discretion. “We created a revision of the policies and procedures manual for AAHOA processes and revamped the by-laws,” he explained. “Before we could have taken the elected treasurer off the board if the board wanted to. We changed that. Some would have it the other way.” An electronic vote from the audience on whether this change was the right thing to do showed a 91% approval by AAHOA attendees. Since Mowji has been demanding of AAHOA in terms of its transparency and the way it goes about its business, it may be no surprise that he has been equally demanding of the hotel industry’s franchise companies within the past year. Toward that end, he created report cards for several major franchise companies through which they were graded on how well they met AAHOA’s famous 12 points of fair franchising. Graded during this process were specifically Choice Hotels International, Wyndham Worldwide, Accor, La Quinta, InterContinental Hotels Group and Carlson Hotels Worldwide. While Mowji did not reveal these companies’ report card performances, he did note that as a result of the report cards, Accor and La Quinta “are now changing their [uniform franchise offering circular]and franchise agreements. The other companies are in a dialogue with us on possible changes.” He added that Accor agreed to revamp its UFOC and change its conduct for licensing with AAHOA’s members. Alterations were made to such aspects as termination window periods and liquidated damages, he said. He further noted that La Quinta has acknowledged the situation and “will work with us on modifying their agreements. But I can’t say the same for the rest. But they will all get their report cards again next year. We’re just starting with this.” He also mentioned that upon the commencement of these report cards, or what are technically called performance appraisal reports, some franchisors threatened that such a maneuver is a violation of anti-trust laws. Electronic voting by the audience showed that AAHOA’s member want to continue with the franchisor reports. However, Mowji asserted, “The right thing to do is to sit down with [the franchisors]. It should be dialogue only. We don’t want to start a war with them; they have more lawyers on staff than we have members.” Later on during the conve
Mukesh Mowji