Having been there and done a lot more than most, Justin Channe still relishes offering the guests staying at his hotel a unique experience that will be fondly remembered. He sat down recently with The Asset at the Intercontinental Beijing Financial Street to share his insights
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| Channe: Providing guests a unique experience | |
Justin Channe speaks like a true hotelier. When it comes to five-star places to stay, creating a distinctive environment is what matters the most. “After seeing the room, you quickly forget about the hotel. So it is very important to create the experience,” says Channe, the general manager of the Intercontinental Beijing Financial Street. In an industry that is increasingly competitive in trying to attract business travellers, maintaining a premium service level is paramount to creating that experience.
Channe, who has been at this Intercon property for nearly 2.5 years, knows this and emphasizes service as part of his style of management. Much of that style comes from his more than 26 years of experience running a variety of hotels and restaurants in the Asia Pacific, which include stints in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, and now China.
Interestingly, Channe stumbled into the hotel service business pretty much by accident. Having grown up in Hong Kong, he was sent to England to study and become a doctor. That did not happen. Instead, Channe says, he found out belatedly that he had a talent for drawing and decided to switch course to study architecture. After university, he took a year off and ended up at the Excelsior in Hong Kong, where he somehow became the manager at what was then the discotheque at the top floor. The rest, as they say, is history.
Channe says Beijing has changed considerably since he arrived in early 2006. “The longer you stay in Beijing, the more you love it,” he notes. At the time, where the Intercontinental Beijing Financial Street is located on the western section, it was a construction site. Indeed, this hotel is the first international luxury hotel to be built to service a brand-new financial district. It is also just minutes away from Tiananmen Square, the Capital Museum and Xidan shopping centre.
Intensified competition
The government has approved an ambitious plan to build this new financial district and has provided considerable support to making it happen quickly. Today, he says there is a sense of excitement about Beijing. “People are hungry to succeed and do better,” he says. “A lot of that is being driven by the hosting of the Olympics this summer.”
And with the Olympics, comes a rush to complete competing luxury hotels in and around the city to meet the deluge of visitors expected at the event. On the eastern side of the city where most of the hotels are located, some 7,000 rooms of the four-star to five-star rank are due to open. Channe believes this is when being able to provide the best training to hotel staff becomes vitally important. “What we do is we create success through our people, so that guests feel that they have stayed in a great hotel.”
At times, he adds, being a good hotelier feels like being a psychologist. “You need to know which buttons to press and anticipate guests’ needs.” The most important thing is to be able to offer something authentic that gives visitors a unique experience. “This could be as simple as a bike tour around the nooks and crannys of Beijing’s old city.”
Hotel occupancy varies throughout the year for the Intercontinental Beijing Financial Street from the low season at the start of the year in January and February building up to the busiest month, which is usually in October, before winding down again at the end of the year. Of course, this year is going to be different. And Channe is expecting a variety of guests to be staying at the hotel.
Since its opening, Channe says the hotel has attracted both leisure and corporate/business guests. In the beginning, he adds, there was a tilt towards more leisure visitors. However, he expects that as the financial district gets completed, the hotel will cater to a balance of both leisure and business travellers.
Given the ambitious plans by many hotels to build out in China, Channe says that one of the greatest challenges facing the industry is the shortage of talent. The Intercontinental group alone, considered the largest international hotel operator in China with a portfolio of 59 hotels across four brands, is expected to complete another 125 hotels by the end of this year. In order to retain talent, he says that he needs to ensure that his staff is always engaged. “There is a future for everybody who wants to stay,” he adds.
– Daniel Yu
