For the past three years, Emporia has been a key player in the hospitality sector in the UAE, supplying some of the best quality product customizations to the biggest hotel chains and groups.

During the pandemic, we as a business had to reshuffle our offerings and quickly adapt to what the hospitality industry needed in order to serve the customers in a safe manner and get used to the new norm. For us, this meant projecting what these needs were going to be and taking the risk to diversify our production directly towards health and hygiene, moving all of our resources in that direction: Facemasks, sanitizers, wet wipes, and disinfectants.

Our ability to disinvest from our core offerings and take the risk of investing in COVID-19 offerings while it was still happening gave us the edge over our competitors, which in turn made us a credible, innovative, go-to partner for hospitality groups in the market for their needs.

As businesses seek new opportunities to accelerate their growth, the UAE is perfectly positioned to help companies set up and scale up to succeed in this new normal. The country is already powered by tomorrow’s thinking for a post-pandemic world.

From R&D that could shape our collective future to automation that empowers human ingenuity, the Emirates brings people, processes, and technology seamlessly together to create an agile foundation for every industry. All thanks to our visionary leadership.

The UAE’s business government has been fine-tuned to give each company the best opportunity for success. We are one of those businesses that thrived during the pandemic purely because we were proactive in the situation instead of being reactive and that’s what businesses today should strive for.

We have to understand the consumer mindset in today’s world and be ready to innovate and bring in solutions to serve these customers so they feel safe to enjoy their experiences.

Many businesses failed to adapt to the market conditions, which in turn affected the livelihood of thousands of employees across the board, driving a negative impact on the economy and consumer mindset.

I have the strong support of my department heads Dinesh Bulchandani, and Titto Paul, and others in my team who have quickly become acquainted with the new normal and have shifted their focus away from their core skill set to grow individually and as a business.

In times like these, we need to plan for the future, inspire our teams, and remind them that there will be an end to this crisis after which the hospitality industry will bounce back stronger than ever.

Navin Narender Moolchandani is the CEO of Emporia. Emporia is a part of Lal’s Group and operates in retail distribution with its core in customization across all aspects of hospitality – bed and bath linen, health and hygiene, in-room, and has recently ventured into the OS&E category.