India’s hotel sector is growing faster than its trained workforce can keep up. Krishna Shantakumar, Director and Co-Founder of Adevo, was recently featured in Hello Entrepreneurs examining the hotel staffing shortage in India — and the structural solution Adevo has been developing since 2021.
Key Takeaways
– India faces a shortage of roughly 150,000 trained hospitality professionals as 100+ branded hotels prepare to open in the next 15 months.
– 64% of new hotel supply is landing in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where formal training infrastructure barely exists.
– Adevo’s pre-opening workforce readiness model trains hotel teams 6–12 months before launch, combining academy cohorts, on-site deployment, and a 100+ course digital LMS.
What the Hotel Staffing Shortage in India Actually Looks Like
Rooms are being built at a pace India’s talent pipeline was never designed to match. Over 100 branded hotel openings are projected in the next 15 months, with 64% of that new supply landing outside the metros — in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities where formal hospitality training centres are either absent or operate at negligible scale.
Roughly 150,000 trained hospitality professionals are currently absent from the workforce. Annual staff turnover in entry and mid-level roles runs between 40 and 45 percent — more than double what comparable service industries experience. Skilled hospitality roles take three to six months to fill. For a property launching in Udaipur, Amritsar, or Tier 2 Karnataka, that timeline does not fit the construction schedule.
Krishna Shantakumar identifies three forces compounding the shortage in the Hello Entrepreneurs feature.
Geographic mismatch: New hotel development targets markets where formal training centres do not operate at scale. Hospitality employers in these cities now compete with retail chains, logistics operators, and BPOs for the same limited candidate pool.
Credential bottlenecks: A three-to-four-year hotel management degree cannot be compressed to fit a six-month opening timeline. And hospitality’s post-pandemic reputation further narrows the applicant funnel in emerging markets where word-of-mouth still dominates career decisions.
The cost of scrambling post-launch: Emergency hiring and overtime in understaffed properties raises labour costs 40 to 60 percent above budget, while guest satisfaction scores fall 25 to 30 percent in the first operating year.
Read the full Hello Entrepreneurs feature here.
How Adevo Solves This Before the Property Opens
Adevo was founded in January 2021 by Krishna Shantakumar, Brendon Pereira, and Rashmi Koppar — three practitioners with a combined 75+ years across hotel F&B operations, restaurant management, and hospitality academia. The company’s core thesis: workforce readiness is a pre-launch deliverable, not a post-opening problem.
Adevo’s pre-opening model works across three stages.
12 months out — workforce mapping. Which departments carry the highest attrition risk? Which roles are hardest to hire locally? Which service standards define the property’s positioning? This planning exercise determines everything downstream.
6 to 9 months out — cohort training at Adevo’s academies. Adevo operates a primary training academy in Bengaluru and a second in Toranagallu, Karnataka, established in partnership with JSW Foundation. Candidates for kitchen, front office, and housekeeping supervision — the roles where an untrained team member is visible to guests within the first hour — go through structured cohort programmes in a live-restaurant and housekeeping lab environment.
3 months out — on-site deployment at the client property. Training moves into the actual building, on the actual systems, against the brand’s own standards. This is where academy learning converts into operational muscle memory.
The difference at opening is measurable. A five-property hotel group that implemented this model with Adevo achieved 90% internal staffing, reduced first-year turnover from 45% to 28%, and held its opening schedule.
Adevo’s online skill development courses also deliver over 100 modular LMS programmes accessible between shifts and during pre-service briefings — making structured learning practical for the shift-based reality of hotel operations.
What Adevo’s Client Results Show
The Hello Entrepreneurs feature draws directly on outcomes from Adevo’s client base.
General Mills India: Adevo trained staff across 6,000 bakeries nationally, developing seven specialised content modules that worked at scale, across geographies, and for operators with varying levels of prior training exposure.
Kempegowda International Airport: Adevo developed passenger services SOPs for one of India’s busiest international airports, translating hospitality service standards into a high-volume, public-facing airport operations context.
Kling Brewery and Kitchen: Following a full-service training intervention by Adevo, the property now consistently holds 4.8+ Google ratings — a sustained baseline, not a post-launch spike.
These outcomes reflect Adevo’s operating principle: training that changes how people perform on the floor, not just what they know on paper.
About Adevo
Adevo (95HM Learning Solutions) is a Bengaluru-headquartered hospitality training company founded in January 2021 by Brendon Pereira, Krishna Shantakumar, and Rashmi Koppar. The company operates two physical academies, an on-site training division, and a digital LMS with 100+ modular courses available in multiple languages.
If you are building a pre-opening training plan or working to reduce attrition at an existing property, contact the Adevo team to discuss a structured workforce readiness programme for your context.
Frequently Asked Questions: Hotel Staffing Shortage in India
Q: Why is the hotel staffing shortage in India concentrated in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities?
A: Most of India’s formal hospitality training institutions are clustered in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, while new hotel development is moving into Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. The trained workforce and the new supply are simply not in the same locations.
Q: How does Adevo’s pre-opening training model work?
A: Adevo begins workforce planning 12 months before a property opens, runs cohort training at its Bengaluru and Toranagallu academies 6–9 months out, then shifts to on-site deployment 3 months before launch. This sequence ensures teams can perform from day one rather than learn on live guests.
Q: What results have Adevo’s hotel clients achieved with pre-opening training?
A: A five-property hotel group that engaged Adevo before opening achieved 90% internal staffing, reduced first-year staff turnover from 45% to 28%, and maintained its opening schedule — outcomes directly attributed to structured pre-opening workforce development.
Q: How long does it take to hire and train hospitality staff in India?
A: Skilled hospitality roles carry hiring cycles of three to six months. On-site induction and service standard training add further weeks before a team member is fully operational — making pre-launch planning a necessity, not a best-practice recommendation.
Q: Does Adevo only work with large hotel chains?
A: No. Adevo works with independent properties, mid-scale operators, restaurant groups, food industry clients, and airports. The pre-opening model is configured to each operator’s own brand standards, service protocols, and geography.
