TV's in the bathroom mirror

	The Charles Hotel
Point a remote and an image appears in a bathroom at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. T.V's are appearing in the bathroom mirrors. Is this where we really want it? I supposed you can watch the news while we brush our teeth or shave. Or are we going to cut ourswleves shaving?

Now What?

Hotels in Hoi An, Vietnam

New beach resort destination in Vietnam
I had the privilege to visit the Hoi An area in January and to evaluate a hotel. The area will be one of the new resort destinations in Asia. It is near Hue the old capital city of Vietnam.

The development of Hoi An is in its infancy stage, there are many three star hotels and there are only a few four star hotels.

To me it reminds me of Phuket in 1980 the first year I visited it.

In this phase of development it’s quite a challenge to make a hotel project viable especially in the four star sector and above. An "Aman" or a "Banyan Tree" product can be feasible as these two groups have a good followings. Another approach I found quite successful in Phuket or Bali is to build a three star chalet type accommodations on a fairly large piece of land and redevelop it 10-15 years later when the market moves to the high growth phase and the land is more valuable.

How would you approach such a market?


tags:Vietnam Hotel , business , 3star

Sydney Hotels

Hotel operational challenges in Sydney
Recently I have the opportunity to review the operations of a few hotels in Sydney. Due to the high labour costs in Australia the hotels there are fairly cost conscious in the area of manning.

There are also numerous regulatory requirements which are quite strict and which a hotel is required to conform to. This is good for the customer but it does cost money.

However I noticed that the bulk of the managers are high school graduates with a few certificates.

We have learnt that the complexity of managing a hotel today requires a person to be at least at a University level and this is probably one of the main challenges there.

What is your experience is allowing a person with such qualification only to run a hotel or a business?

Tags: mangement , youth , Sydney Business

Sex as a perk!

In the hotel industry when a person becomes a senior manager, booze is free and sex is free!!!

I have seen many senior managers takes advantage of drinking as much as they like on the hotel’s expense. On top of this, quite often they harass junior staffs for sexual favour. This is especially true of the expatriate managers. Part of the problem is that local staffs offering themselves too. Often these managers treat these actions almost as perks.

In the case of one hotel I handed to an international chain, the three expat's were having affairs with local staffs within three weeks! When we took over a hotel in China I was told that the eight expat's managers under the previous management all had a girl friend each within one month!!!

What is proper conduct? Why do many of the international chains not take actions against these staffs? Is this a case of the sticking one's head in the sand like an ostrich?


Tags:sex , expat , conduct

Laptop thefts on the rise!

When we made free wifi available in all the public areas, restaurants and meeting halls in all our hotels we didn't foresee that laptop thefts would be a great problem for us.

Over the last two months we have had a few including a theft from one of our staffs.

Guests do assume that a hotel or a restaurant in a hotel is safe and leave their valuables or laptops unattended. A friend of mine even left his table in a hotel restaurant to go back to his room for 15 minutes! Luckily for him I was at the restaurant a few minutes after he went up.

Our cctv managed to record one theft and these guys are professional, in this particular instance it was a gang of three who are prepared to run interference if they had been caught in the act.

I have also seen people leaving their luggages and laptops on a trolley in airports unattended to visit the toilets!!!

The guy who steals may just be another guest!!


Tags: laptop theft , crime , cartoon

Hotel fever in China!!!

Everyone is rushing into China to start a hotel chain, especially the 3-star category.

I just attended the Shanghai Investment Conference on hotels. There appears to be a gold rush to establish mid market or 3 star hotel chains in China. Every major world wide brand was there. A few Chinese local brands have also been established.

It would be interesting to see in the future whose strategy will work in China. If the brands follow a cookie cutter approach they are bound to fail.


Tags:china , hotels

Customer Service

how to attract candidates who are warm, friendly & truly customer driven?

There were several comments in a local daily last week about how customer service in Malaysia is generally poor. It brings to the fore the issue of how the hospitality industry actually recruits people who are warm, friendly and customer focused. While some argue that friendlyliness can be trained, it is becoming difficult to get people who are genuinely friendly and warm - people who can anticipate the customers' needs and respond before being asked.

While visiting a zoo, some years back, I had come to the sun bears' enclosure. While the other bears were lazing away, there was a single bear who got up, tried to reach me (for some reason) and then tried to do some antics to get my attention for about 5-10 minutes. At this point, I already had to take a photograph of this warm and friendly bear. The photograph reminds me of how the bear made an impression on me - a lifetime impression. Well I guess that was excellent customer service - but on a different level.



Tag: service