Book excerpt: India has been in transition for the last two decades, moving from a mixed economy toward a market economy model, and the Indian hospitality industry is metamorphosing into a mature industry. It is time that the story of the Indian hospitality industry is told. The Indian Hospitality Industry: Dynamics and Future Trends tells that story, one defined by the industry’s push for growth in revenues and the struggle to match the revenue growth with profitability. The volume includes a selection of insightful chapters that offer research into the multiple dimensions of the Indian hospitality industry. The book covers many segments of the hospitality sector, including hotels, events and catering businesses, and restaurants and coffee shops, both domestic and small mom-and-pop businesses as well as international chains. The opening chapters set the tone for providing an overarching perspective on the status of the industry in terms of the macroeconomic variables and how they may have impacted the health of hospitality businesses in India. The book then goes on to explore a wide variety of issues. The editors and chapter authors are either practitioners themselves or researchers, looking at both domestic and international hospitality business in India and a wide variety of economic factors. The information divulged here will be important for stakeholders, which includes domestic and international hospitality professionals, business leaders, investors, and those in governmental positions, especially in the tourism ministry. The volume informs on the issues and challenges that that the hospitality industry in India is up against. The book looks at the dilemma of a industry that responded to the demand growth promise by ramping up supply, only to find that the investments made were received by an actual growth that was way shy of forecasts and left investors with unexpected losses on their profit & loss statements and bloodied balance sheets.