Northstar

PEOPLE www.travelweeklyweb.com Chat with … Tell us more about the pre-launch and pre-opening processes – what are the key factors involved in the different stages? There's design and engineering, there's staffing, training, quality standards, branding, collaterals, marketing and budgeting, making sure that we satisfy the owners and the huge capital investments that they've made into this project. There's also responsible business and guest experience and there's making sure that we are developing and training our people for the brand. The brand is not just about the collaterals and colours or making sure we have the right thread count on our beds and the right coffee mugs in our rooms, it's also about building the right standards through our people. Behavioural and training seems to be the focus here, can you share with us more on that aspect? Crowne Plaza is a brand whose business clientele are strivers. These are people who are travelling for success so we have to make sure we enable them, support them in their meeting and business needs, sleeping needs and we make sure our staff is tuned in to our customers' needs. This may be in terms of asking purposeful questions in order to enable the customers to have an enjoyable stay here in Hong Kong. Rumour has it that the next Central Business District in Hong Kong is going to be in this location, this must be great news for you. It is great news, we have heard of the CBD moving to the Kowloon Bay and Tseung Kwan O area and we've heard that these particular businesses that are moving over have got to do with shipping and logistics so we look at this as great news for us. The corporate business base is important to us and of course, we have the travel agent market too. www.travelweeklyweb.com Dominique Berhouet, general manager, Crowne Plaza Hong Kong Kowloon East He is eloquent, ambitious, wears a dark-immed glasses that reminds us of a certain fashion designer. Best of all, he knows his sauces and is ever-ready to whip up a good dish that can give a chef a run for his money. We speak with Dominique Berhouet and fi nd out how his F&B experience has helped him in managing his team at the soon-to-open Crowne Plaza Hong Kong Kowloon East, to deliver their best. How long is the planning period for the pre-opening? About 18 months. How has your start in F&B helped you in your current role as a GM? My father owned a small hotel and restaurant in San Francisco, California and I was raised in the business. F&B is made up of a lot of little different things, temperatures and different sauces and I think back to le repertoire de la cuisine and the cookbook that I had to learn. So there's a lot of detail in F&B and this also carries over to the guest experience, the different tastes, so you have to be able to deliver on so many different levels. I was raised in France, so I had both the Californian and French experience. I was in California during the emergence of new world cuisine when Wolfgang Puck and the rest were rolling out California cuisine. I was heavily involved then with the emergence of California cuisine, from California to New York and then to Europe, with healthier and tastier food and more creative delivery of F&B. Do you cook? As a matter of fact I do. I just enrolled myself in a cooking competition in Longgang, near Shenzhen, where a lot of hotels are participating and they are sending their chefs to do cooking and all the proceeds will go to Project Hope which builds schools for underprivileged children in China. And that's under IHG's responsibility. I'm going to enter the competition and I'm going for it myself! I'm going to be preparing a Mediterranean seafood dish, like a stew. You are a veteran in the hospitality industry, with more than 30 years of experience. How has the industry evolved? It has certainly become more organised. You can maintain the creative aspect, at the same time you can get more organised. I give you an example; if you look at this wheel (the IHG wheel), before, the industry as a whole is trying to measure different successes and how we conduct our business. What we've done at IHG is that we have basically broken it down to four categories. People: We have to make sure that our employees love their jobs and they are living their winning ways. Create room for themselves: We realise that our employees have their own personal lives, so we make sure that we are not just focusing on work and productivity but we want them to be happy and enjoy their lives, that there's work-life balance. And most importantly also, personally to me, is that we develop our skills. We have a huge computer-based learning programme and for every single operation in the hotel, there's a huge database of information there. Our people are important to us as they deliver the guest experience. Responsible businesses: As mentioned, Project Hope where we have supported around seven schools in China. I was also previously a chairman of a golf charity event. Support community: We are heavily involved in risk management and we support our community Log on to our website to get the full interview with Dominique Berhouet. 10 JULY 2012 | TRAVELWEEKLY ASIA ■ | 7

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