Bulletin No. 1, 2018

From Hotel to Hotel School 29 I have worked as general manager for 20 years and area vice-president for five years in the hotel industry, and dealt with different landlords and guests. Hotel is both a service industry and a complex business which requires administrators of high calibre. Over the years, I have come across numerous cases, both successful and extremely challenging ones. It will be meaningful if I could share my experience with the staff and students of the School and provide professional training for the young generation. The School’s programme is modelled after that offered by Cornell and has Hyatt Regency Hong Kong (Shatin) as its teaching hotel. I have studied an advanced management course at Cornell and worked for Hyatt for 27 years. This coincidence also served as an incentive for my move. I believe what I gained from the legal training at Jinan University and the doctoral training in management at Sun Yat-sen University will all add up to create a new chemistry to bring the School to go from strength to strength. Service is the crux of the hospitality industry. But as a business, it cannot be sustained if it’s not making profits. The objective of our programme is clear: we go beyond management to cover the entire business operation with a focus on the relationship between hospitality and real estate. We familiarize our students with the whole process of a hotel, from initial planning to operation and profitability. The same applies to real estate: students have to learn the entire process flow, starting from valuation and land acquisition to construction and transaction. University education is not vocational training. If we only focus on the training of supporting staff, then there will be a bottleneck in our industry. We have to train up our young people as future leaders. In the long run, we aim at nurturing them to be leaders in various professions, with substantial knowledge in resource deployment for projects on different scales. Our programme includes 900 hours of practicum to equip the students with enough frontline experience before graduation, which will be vital for facing future challenges in the hospitality and real estate fields, and for developing their entrepreneurial potentials. The opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai- Macao Bridge will accelerate the movements of people and goods. Plus the Belt and Road Initiative, the demand for hotel accommodation can only increase. Putting Hong Kong within the wider context of the Greater Bay Area, and considering its accompanying infrastructural developments and policies, I must say that the future looks really rosy. Hong Kong’s excellent management quality makes the city in hot demand from the Belt and Road countries. In the next three years, China, Hong Kong and Macao will see the establishment of over 1,000 hotels of different niches. The Greater China region has a high demand for talent in the industry, and our graduates will therefore enjoy ample opportunities for career development. I have witnessed how some international hotels, by adhering to the western model of management, overlooked the oriental way of handling things and doing business, as well as the culinary habits of local customers. Handling cultural differences is like holding an egg: if you hold it too tightly, the egg will crack; but if you don’t hold it tightly enough, it will fall. There should be a balance between occidental discipline and oriental ease. Generally speaking, I think the East is better than the West when it comes to the provision of sophisticated services. The changes are revolutionary. In the past, we had to go through six or seven steps from reservation to checking-in. Today, it’s just one click on the Internet. The rise of Airbnb has made our competitors even more numerous, and room rental websites are now all the rage. Hoteliers are thinking hard about the reason why most customers prefer not to book with the hotels directly. In addition to the differences in choice, price, and terms, the unfashionable and unfriendly designs of many hotel websites also make booking cumbersome. In this e-commerce era, young people no longer pay with cash or credit card. All challenges come with crises and opportunities. The Internet collects loads of data about the backgrounds and preferences of customers, making customized services possible. Luxury hotels with a small market niche are especially reliant on such client-tailored services. A room booked by a female customer must be fitted with facilities suitable for women; elderly customers should be assigned rooms closer to the elevator and never a table tucked away in a corner of the restaurant. Give your customer an occasional surprise. But never celebrate ahead the birthday of a German customer, because Germans consider that bad luck. Why did you join the University after working in the hotel sector for more than 30 years? How is the School’s BBA Programme in Hospitality and Real Estate positioned? What does the future hold for the hotel and tourism industry? Are there any cultural differences within the hotel industry? What is the impact of the Internet on the hotel and tourism industry? From Hotel to Hotel School