Gujaratis own over forty-two per cent of the hotel business in the United States, and Patels own eighty to ninety per cent of the motels in American small
towns. So, if you stop by a motel on the highway to check in for the night, it is likely that you’ll find a friendly Gujarati face behind the counter.
Kanji Manchhu Desai crossed the Mexican border in California in 1942 and came to the United States. He stayed at a low-cost inn in Sacramento, California, owned by a woman of Japanese descent. When a Japanese aerial attack struck Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1942, the Japanese-American owner of the inn was forced into internment.
Desai, an undocumented immigrant, and two other Gujarati farmworkers took her motel on rent and turned it into the first motel owned by the Patels. In 1947, Desai moved to the Goldfield Hotel in San Francisco. According to a California-based historian, Mahendra Doshi, he warmly welcomed all immigrants from Gujarat and encouraged them to enter the hospitality business.
Doshi says Desai played an essential role in setting up the Gujarati hotelier empire. He encouraged other Gujaratis by supporting them with ‘handshake loans,’ in which he loaned money without demanding collateral or scheduled payment. They could pay whenever they could. ‘If you are a Patel, lease a hotel,’ Desai would say.
While Desai did open the gates to an empire, it was not until the 1980s that Gujaratis came to dominate the hospitality business. However, it was not a smooth ride. In the 1940s, many local hoteliers were keen to exit their motel business as they could not manage the cost and maintenance. The younger generations also seemed uninterested in it.
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