I worked with a GM once who kept three days of propane reserve at his property. Three days. I asked him what happens on day four. He looked at me like I'd asked what happens when the sun doesn't come up. "I figure it out," he said. "That's the job."

Right now, about 8,000 hotels and restaurants across Odisha, India are figuring it out... and "it" is a full-blown commercial LPG shortage that's been grinding the hospitality industry there for over a month. The cause is geopolitical... the conflict in West Asia has choked the Strait of Hormuz, and India imports roughly 60% of its LPG through that corridor. The Indian government did what governments do in a crisis: prioritized domestic household supply and invoked the Essential Commodities Act, which effectively cut commercial users (hotels, restaurants, caterers) off at the knees. Hotels in some markets reported having two to four days of gas stock remaining. That was back in early March. It's mid-April now and the catering association is threatening statewide protests.

Here's where this gets operational. Hotels in Puri... one of Odisha's biggest tourist destinations... have jacked food prices 30% to 40% to cover costs. Tourist arrivals in response dropped 10% to 20%, hitting hardest among budget and middle-class travelers (which is most of the market). Some operators are buying domestic LPG cylinders on the black market at 1,300 to 2,000 rupees per cylinder, roughly double the normal price, just to keep the kitchen running. Others have switched to induction stoves, wood-fired ovens, kerosene. Think about that for a second. You're a hotel kitchen that was built around gas burners, your menu was designed around gas cooking, your staff was trained on gas equipment... and now you're improvising with kerosene and induction plates while trying not to lose your guest base. That's not a pivot. That's survival mode.

The state government bumped commercial LPG allocation to 50% (20% general commercial, 20% specifically for hotels and restaurants, 10% conditional). They're pushing piped natural gas as a long-term alternative. Both of those are fine on a policy slide. Neither one helps the guy whose banquet kitchen can't execute a wedding menu next Saturday. The hotel and restaurant association says 50,000 jobs are at risk across the state. The catering association puts the number at 100,000 workers across their 2,000-plus units. Even if those numbers are advocacy math (and they might be), cut them in half and you're still looking at a regional hospitality crisis that's barely making international headlines.

I'm writing about Odisha because the specific lesson is universal. Every hotel operation has a single-point-of-failure dependency that nobody thinks about until it breaks. In Odisha right now, it's cooking fuel. In your market, it might be water supply, electrical grid reliability, a single-source vendor for your HVAC parts, or the one internet provider that serves your building. The question isn't whether you have a vulnerability like this. You do. The question is whether you've identified it, stress-tested it, and built even a rough contingency plan... or whether your plan is the same as that GM I knew. "I figure it out." Because figuring it out when you're already in crisis is the most expensive way to solve any problem.