Northstar

Chat with Simon Yip He started out as a young tour guide before joining the tourism board and entering the hotel industry. He has lived in several countries, seen through the evolution of technology. From rack rates to smart keys, we find out how the hotel industry has changed and how The Peninsula brand will continue to grow in our chat with Simon Yip, vice-president, Sales and Marketing, The Peninsula Hotels. Tell us more about your new role. This is actually very much a new role for me even though I’ve been with the company for close to 11 years. My first four years were spent at the Peninsula Bangkok as the director of marketing for the hotel. In 2005 I was transferred to Hong Kong and became the director of marketing for the flagship hotel. I was there for five years and in early 2001, I was promoted as the regional director of marketing for China, looking after three countries namely Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. After a year of having a taste of the regional role, then they moved me to the head office and I became the VP for sales, started early this year. It’s a big difference between managing one property or three properties in China and now, overseeing all nine properties, with the global team under my care. And there’s going to be another one opening in Paris next year? Yes, there will be a lot of preparation before the hotel opens at the end of next year. So I can imagine that in the next six months everyone in the head office will be very busy, setting up the pre-opening office, the sales and marketing, the operations, food and beverage. We are all very excited. You have more than 30 years of experience in the hospitality industry, can you share with us how the industry has evolved? Yes indeed, close to 30 years! I star ted out in Hong Kong where I was born and raised as a young tour guide in the travel industry and then I had my very first hotel job in Hong Kong at the New World. Thereafter I emigrated to Australia and worked there for close to eight years with the then Hong Kong Tourism Association (now renamed as the Hong Kong Tourism Board). I then returned back to the hotel scene and joined the InterContinental Sydney as the director of sales. Following which were several appointments with Mandarin Oriental in Jakarta, Hong Kong and Singapore. A big change. Thirty, 40 years ago, hotels focus more on the product. Nice hotel, good rooms, good breakfast, good restaurant, good service. Now, these are still very much important but a lot more focus on what the customers actually want. It’s no longer about “We are the best, we have all of these things,” but we really have to do a lot of research to find out what the customers really want and from there we create the product, not the other way round. I guess it’s the same across other industries as well. For business travellers, time is important so we need to provide quality for the time-strapped travellers. A fragment of a second delay can make the stock market go down by millions. The best technology should help in delivering the best service to our customers. What are your thoughts on the use of technology, in particular, smart phone applications and self-reservation via online portals. Are these helping in terms of sales revenue and how has this impacted the travel agents that have been driving the travel industry? In America, there is this very famous luxury travel network called Virtuoso. The CEO, Matthew Upchurch, mentioned this at a conference, which is very important for the travel industry and hotels as well, that nowadays, the plus points for the travel agents or hotel concierge, is to have the knowledge that one cannot search on Google. If you can Google it, why does the customer need you? So we have to really find out the best of the city, something very local that you cannot Google. This is a really strong point which Matthew Upchurch highlighted. Can you define The Peninsula Hotel ’s brand and direction globally for the next year or two? The Peninsula brand is well-known as one of Asia’s best luxury brands. It started back in 1928 when The Peninsula Hong Kong first opened. We definitely have our very proud heritage and because of our strong history, our hotel brand always stands out as very unique compared to other young brands. And being a very well-established brand does not mean that everything is old fashioned. The Peninsula always embraces the latest in technology. We are very young at hear t, although we call ourselves the Grande Dame of Asia. Why in 1994 when we added a tower at The Peninsula Hong Kong, we added a very avant garde restaurant called the Phoenix – again we want to show the world that yes, we are the Grande Dame of the Far East but we are young at heart. And then a few years ago we acquired two Mini Coopers. People think of The Peninsula as the Rolls Royce of the Far East, very luxurious but we added two Mini Coopers. It’s really fun to zoom around town in a busy city like Tokyo or New York in them!

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