Elvin Lai, a first generation immigrant from Taiwan and seasoned hotel owner/operator, has been bestowed the honorable title of San Diego’s Entrepreneur of the Year
San Diego, CA – November 20, 2014 – HOTELbeat, a provider of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) based hospitality operations management solutions, is proud to announce that CFO and Co-founder Elvin Lai has been named Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year by the Asian Business Association (ABA) of San Diego. The award was presented at the ABA’s 24th Annual Scholarship and Awards Gala on October 15, 2014.
Lai is a first generation immigrant of Taiwan with strong ties to San Diego’s Asian community. His deep-seated dedication to the hospitality industry and advanced technology solutions has led him to found several successful businesses before the age of 30, including HOTELbeat, the Cork and Craft restaurant in Rancho Bernardo, and a winery. He is also the owner/operator of the Ocean Park Inn Hotel, a family business inherited from his father.
“It is a true honor to have been named Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year,” says Lai. “2014 has been a landmark year. Not only was The Cork and Craft opened and is thriving, but HOTELbeat’s software is rapidly being adopted nationwide and with its use, Ocean Park Inn Hotel has already set record profit numbers prior to the close of the fourth quarter.”
The Asian Business Association of San Diego is comprised of nearly 500 members representing both public and private businesses spanning all industries from software to construction. The decision to bestow Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year to Lai was unanimous upon his nomination to the board, which consists of City Council members, Mayor’s office and ABA honorary members. To the chapter’s knowledge, Lai is the youngest member to ever receive this award.
Currently, Lai is a board member of the San Diego Tourism Authority and the San Diego Hotel and Motel Association, as well as the California Hotel and Lodging Association. He also is a Government Relations Committee member at the Asian Business Association and part of the Pacific Beach Business Improvement District for Discover PB. Local San Diego businesses are at the core of Lai’s focus. He attributes a passion for problem solving as being the fuel behind his career and community involvement. His contributions to hospitality associations have helped to give small hotels a voice, resulting in greater considerations in bills and policy that would affect the independent hotelier.
Born into the hotel business, Lai’s grandfather was the original owner operator of the old Kala Kai Motel, later to become the Ocean Park Inn Hotel. The hotel was then passed on to his father and uncle, who jointly managed the property until the death of his father in 2003. At that time, Lai was a junior at the University of San Diego pursuing a pre-med degree. Following his father’s dream for his son to run the family business, he left his pursuit of medicine and went full-time into hotel operations.
Lai’s pre-med background, combined with a passion for analysis and data, has provided him with a unique leadership perspective towards businesses. While most people see a problem and try to fix it, Lai goes deeper into the problem to find the underlying causes. Thinking outside of the box and taking a full circle approach to business operations has made him successful in his own businesses. Through his various associations, Lai has provided local businesses with the same helpful tactics to ensure that they thrive alongside him. It is this type of contribution to fellow businessmen and women, coupled with Lai’s successful ventures that led to his nomination for Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year by the Asian Business Association of San Diego.
Similarly, it was his passion for problem solving that led to the development of HOTELbeat. Like many independent properties, the Ocean Park Inn Hotel runs with a slim operational staff but serves customers with high expectations. Frustrated with a lack of up to-the-second knowledge about operational performance, Lai was seeking a way to measure what the staff was doing and quantify services that were in the shadows – such as maintenance. After reviewing all the tracking and reporting solutions on the market he determined that none effectively addressed the pressures and concerns of immigrant hoteliers or small operations. Putting into play his passion for business and technology, HOTELbeat was born from this quest for a better performance management system. Within HOTELbeat, Lai combined the distillation of best practices and needs to create a cutting edge, powerful platform unlike any other solution on market.
Today, the company offers a unique new service delivery and reporting platform for hotels with a laser focus on cost management and customer service. The web-based and mobile-native HOTELbeat solution is available in three languages and features modules for a variety of operational areas, including front desk/redbook logging, housekeeping, maintenance, lost & found, and staff dispatching. By giving hoteliers the ability to see everything happening in their hotel and monetize it using analytic data and visuals graphs, HOTELbeat empowers front line employees, makes actionable decisions easy and keeps hotels on point. These factors directly impact the bottom line, which has been demonstrated at Ocean Park Inn Hotel.
