Journals of a Hotel Manager

Tall, trim, good-looking and speaks three languages, Mike is slated to be the next president of the company. He ran a flagship property for over five years and became a star in the company as well as a regular feature in the travel magazines with his movie star appeal. Now I feel lucky to report directly to him and I am sure I can learn a great deal from him. When he announced that he would be on island for 10 hours to inspect the last details before the opening, I was only too happy to welcome him.

He steps off the speedboat in white jeans and a pair of cowboy boots. Needless to say he starts to perspire pretty soon. Did he know that we are on a tropical island? I offer to find a pair of shorts for him but he declines.

I take him on a tour of the island. He asks intelligent questions and makes constructive comments. During the staff general meeting, he speaks about how much the company appreciates our collective efforts and how important human resources are. At dinner time he shows no qualms of eating in the cafeteria among the staff and the construction workers.

It has been a long day and I invite him to be the first guest of our mock up room for the night. As I walk him to the bungalow to say good night at almost midnight, he turns to me and asks, “Can you send a housekeeper to my room right away?”

“Sure. But is there anything I can do for you?”

“I need to have my clothing laundered. As I am leaving tomorrow at 7am, I need them to be ready by 6am.”

Just then I realize he arrived with no luggage, not even an overnight bag.

“Umm, of course we can arrange it. How many pieces would there be?” I inquire. We do not say ‘no’ to our guests. We certainly do not say ‘no’ to our regional manager.

“Oh, everything that’s on me,” he chuckles, “I forgot to pack a new set. Thanks buddy!” He shakes my hand and goes inside.

How could a grown man who travels to the 4 hotels he oversees on a monthly basis forget to pack a change of clothing? The overnight was pre-arranged, not a last minute delay. And he knows it clearly that laundry department does not operate overnight in a closed hotel. Nevertheless, it looks like some poor staff will have to wake up now and work overnight so the regional manager can go home in clean clothes.

Important lesson learned: never abuse power simply because you can.  And to always pack your own change of clothing.

All the units are up. Thatched roofs are being laid by the Indonesian crew at an amazing speed. The main kitchen is being hosed down from the construction dust and the stainless steel appliances sparkle for the first time in months. Most of the staff are back on island and there are rigorous training programs going on. There is a lively buzz in the air as a fashion show of the new uniforms will be held in the lobby today. And I am having a fight with the Director of Design and Procurement from corporate.

Miss Darling at the corporate is the embodiment of the eternal conflict between corporate and operations. She sits in her posh office somewhere in a metropolitan city and chooses supplies for a property half a world away without an inkling of the reality on site:

•  200 dainty beach umbrellas are ordered. They provide approximately a palm-sized shade under the searing tropical sun. The slightest sea breeze topples them either into the lagoon or on the future guest heads.

• As a resort frequented mostly by honeymooners, we receive 80 twin beds and 40 king beds for our 100-room property. We have wanted 80 king beds and 40 twin beds (for the odd Japanese honeymooners who require twin beds, even on honeymoon). Of course it was entirely our fault that Miss Darling messed up the bed type.

•  The said twin beds are accompanied by king-sized bedsheets.

• Flat-screen TVs are in the design book. Hooray! But wait a minute. The order shows they are an older version with no swivel base. Can Miss Darling please order the version with the swivel?

o “No. Build your own swivel. I have already pushed the button.”

o Of course we have nothing else to do when opening a resort. We will have the entire engineering team dedicated to converting precious wood supplies imported at owner’s expenses to TV swivels.

• The said TVs are to arrive on property with opening four months away. Where shall we store these precious and delicate appliances?

o “Why, put them in your ballroom!”

o “Well, our property has no ballroom. We are on an island the size of a park lot.”

o “That’s not my problem.”

o “Could you please delay the shipment to perhaps a week before the opening so we can put the TVs into the units directly?”

o “No. I have already pushed the button.”

The said TVs are currently housed in a container on the main island, at $17,000 a month, at owner’s expenses. I would love to have that money to upgrade the staff accommodation, or to buy a new generator for the powerhouse, or to dry dock one of the speedboats. Thanks to Miss Darling, it is spent on storing TVs that by the time we open will be outdated by a few versions only because she cannot wait to “push the button”.

She surely pushes my buttons.

A month has passed and I am happy to report that we have a solution for the rat invasion. It is outrageous to think that we needed to fly in a rodent expert all the way from Holland. He came highly recommended and I managed to convince the owners that spending $1000 on one air ticket is totally worthwhile when we are facing any future rebate at $1000 a room per night.

Hans earned our respect from the moment he entered the meeting room. Unlike most pest control officers, he was clean-shaven, well dressed and soft spoken. I was most impressed that rats had their own PowerPoint presentation. Hans quickly pointed out why our own rodent control had little success. He color-schemed the rats and highlighted their behavioral patterns. We were putting traps in the kitchen while the Asiatic black rats live in trees! South African rats are most active during the day while Indian rats come out only during the night…

We never knew we were the United Nations of Rodents headquarters!

Within one day, Hans made drastic changes to our pest control formula and the most daring move was to install metal rings on the coconut trees. We positioned the foot wide aluminum rings about 2 feet below the crown of the trees - just within sight of the juicy young coconut buds the rats love so much but just out of reach. Their claws will not be able to cling to the slippery aluminum therefore we will be able to catch them on the ground level.

By the end of the second day and Hans already on his way back to Holland, all our coconut trees proudly displayed their brand new shiny rings and we began to collect up to twenty rats in traps a night. The number peaked one day at 35 and began to dwindle to one or two a day. I guess we are finally on our way to a rodent-free island for the opening.

One last task before opening: I need to come up with a good story to explain the tree rings. Would guests really look up and notice the rings? If so, I can always blame the ubiquitous lizards.

Did you know that remote tropical islands have very little wild life on land?  I never thought about it before I came here.  We have the two resident crows who probably were stowaways on cargo ships which docked at the main island.  They are loud and obnoxious like all city crows.  The only indigenous animals on my island are fruit bats.  They live in the coconut trees.  Brown in color and with a wingspan of a good 3 feet, they are silent gliders across the turqoise blue at sunset.  During the day, I would occasionally see one swooping overhead, their leathery wings batting without a sound. 

But recently we have a new species on island.  I am sorry to say that rodents are among us.  They are, again, stowaways on cargo ships that transported timber from the other tropical countries.  Since there is no cat on the island, the crows eat only human leftovers and the bats are vegetarians - sorry, fruitarians - the rats run the island at night.  We set traps all over the place with little results and store food source carefully.  Their ferocious appetite is not to be messed with.  Last night, we discovered that a couple of bags of green tea in the kitchen were torn open and obviously chewed upon.  I guess they are getting hungry and desparate.

Chef has an idea.  Since kitchen and food sources belong to his territory, he finds the rodent problem particularly irritating.

“Why don’t we catch a few of these damned rats and burn them?  The smell and the scream will certainly scare the rest of them bad rats!” he proclaimed.

“And where do you think the rest of them will escape to? This is an island my friend.  You think they will steal one of our boats and sail into the sunset?” I laughed.

Once they are here, the rats will never leave - until we kill all of them.  I wish we could do a ceremony for the Rat God. 

Why is it that everywhere I go I need to deal with these bloody rodents? 

They scurry around in our makeshift restaurant at night since the cafeteria is still under renovation, illiciting a few yelps from female staff.  They pull acrobatic stunts a la Cirque du Soleil on a tiny ledge from the thatched roof.  Tonight one even came up to me as I was enjoying a rare cup of tea in the evening breeze on the wooden deck in front of the lobby.  It stopped barely a foot away from me, landed on its haunches and sat up like a dog begging for food.

That is just wrong.  I vow to myself I need to get rid of them before the opening, which is about 2 months away if things go on schedule.  

Things happen on an island with great timing.  A coconut will choose to fall just when a person passes underneath to either scare the hell out of him or render him unconscious, depending on how fast that person walks.  However, when the barge with our much anticipated supplies of toilet paper, ink cartridges, cement and a rare box of sirloin arrives, the tide chooses to be the lowest in months.  The barge runs aground in the channel.  It sits like a beached whale awaiting the rising of the tide.  I had to dispatch a dive master who is a good swimmer to rescue the sirloin.  The cement and toilet paper can roast in the sun.

Our HR director went on an R&R over the weekend.  The office was unmanned.  Upon his return he was shocked to find a voice mail informing us of a bomb to be detonated at 11am.  The voice was menacing.  The culprit unknown.  The threat sounded real.  The only problem was that the message was 3 days old.

My question is: is this a coconut about to fall at any moment or the tide which will eventually rise?

Luckily the island is small and a search for a bomb turned up empty.  Let’s hope for the best.  Most of the time the coconut misses.

The recent lack of posts is simply because I have been working about 20 hours a day. There is absolutely nowhere to go unwind on an island that is a construction site.   The home I have currently is not enticing at all.  Therefore I work.

Most staff loiter in the cafeteria after dark when the temperature is cooler, where they smoke a cigarette and watch ESPN. But now even the cafeteria is being gutted out to be renovated. We all need to trek through dangerous pipes and uneven sandy path to the northern tip of the island three times a day to eat our meals at the Seafood restaurant. At night, it is pitch dark and only our cell phones provide a glimmer of light so at least we won’t run into each other or into a ditch.

The food also starts to get to me. Due to the tiny kitchen that we are currently operating in, there is no point importing expensive food supplies. The ingredients are all fresh but the menu consists of tuna, tuna and tuna. In the morning it is canned tuna; lunch is tuna curry; and dinner gives you tuna broth. We have to eat everything with steamed rice. The only vegetables we get are onions and carrots. I am certain that at the moment, after years of abusing my heart and liver with fatty steaks, foie gras, pork chops and the essential cheeseburgers, I should be in better health than when I was born.

I don’t feel healthy though. I feel as if my stomach is eating itself. I have been dreaming about a greasy burger and a cold beer. That’s bad. Therefore today I decided to take the evening off and go to the famous Airport Hotel bar. The most important reason is, of course, our alcohol license has expired and can only be renewed after the renovation.
As the country is strictly Muslim, only islands that have hotels can apply for an alcohol license. The Airport Hotel is renowned for being the only locally run hotel that sells alcohol. Because it has no star and is just an airport hotel, a beer has a much more reasonable price than in a 5-star hotel such as ours. I could go to another luxury resort and I am sure they will waive the charges. But it requires a phone call to the GM as an island protocol, an unavoidable hello and chitchat with one of the executives who will receive me, and I don’t want to say I simply pine for a burger.

The Chief Engineer, an Aussie, and a consultant for boats (yes, there is such a job and he gets paid well), a Yank, joined me in the watering hole for expats who crave cheap junk food. Half of pound of beef pattie and half of a dozen beer later, I am happy to report that the sound of the lapping tide on the beach is sweeter, and the millions of stars above are brighter than ever.

Living on a construction site means there is no escape from the constant cacophony of drilling, sanding, soldering and banging.  Friday is the blessed day off for the construction team although very few of them are Muslims.  So I slept in until 8:30am.  Currently I live in a single room in the management block since the previous GM has not officially vacated the GM bungalow and he has gone on his sabbatical.  In the future, this room will serve as a 2-year home for a department head.

Housing is a major problem, mainly because the island is so small that we are forced to put staff up in dormitory style while making space for other essential luxuries such as a computer room, a relaxation room with books and TV, a staff laundry area, a basketball-cum-football-cum-volleyball-cum-badminton-cum-social dance-court.  The contract guarantees a department head single room accommodation.  The room is around 150 sqaure feet with its own bathroom.  It is equipped with a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and a chair.  I have seen a Motel 6 near the Death Valley better than this.  Line staff live six to a room, sharing one bathroom.  We try in vain to choose roommates in different departments.  It is not because we don’t want inter-departmental friendship.  It is important to guarantee some sort of privacy for each staff in the accommodation during the day albeit for just 20 minutes.  Therefore we will put an overnight security guard, a morning shift waiter, a day shift housekeeper, an afternoon shift Front Desk agent, a split-shift kitchen commis and a late shift bartender in one room.  Hopefully during shift change one of them at least could use the bathroom without waiting.

As part of the renovation process, we are constructing a staff hotel on BI.  The owners paid a hefty sum on a piece of land on the western shore of BI.  We are building a 200-bed accommodation for the staff there so we can hopefully reduce the occupancy in the staff rooms to 3-4 people per room. 

With the construction of the staff hotel, we will need to upgrade the generator system on BI as well as setting up a sewage treatment plant.  We are looking at spending up to $100k on the infrastructure.   Otherwise the staff hotel will be nothing but an empty shell with no power and no water.   The upgrade of the electrical system and the water/sewage will benefit the local villagers for generations to come.  I am surprised at the owner’s generosity and wish that the negotiation with the BI island chief tomorrow will be an easy one.

TI is truly a tiny island. About 2000 feet long and 200 feet wide, it was originally a sandbank from BI. The tip of the island pointed almost to true north, thus allowing guest villas to be built on both east and west shores offering sweeping view of sunrise and sunset over the ocean. Beyond the northern tip of the island are the popular water bungalows built on stilts where guest can enjoy the feeling of living on water.

Due to the limited area of the island, back of the house area is cramped with all support functions including our own generator, water desalination plant, kitchen, laundry, all offices and staff quarters. The GM bungalow is on the southern-most tip right next to the sewage treatment plant: so much for the glamour of living on a remote island as the chief.

Every island has an island chief, virtually the village leader. The staff jokingly referred to me as the island chief. This is a new title that I have to get used to. At the moment, I govern a skeleton crew who is essential to the hotel re-opening - engineers, HR, reservations and a small kitchen team that feeds the staff. The island is currently swarmed by 500 construction workers. They have very clear duties and functions. The Thai team is in charge of concrete, managed by a Thai manager who likes to cook deliciously looking Pad Thai for his staff. The Bangladeshi crew members represent the experts in laying pipes and electrical lines. The Indonesian delegates are all master wood carvers who work with massive wooden blocks for the refined decoration in public areas. On the hotel side we also have a Japanese language teacher, a Filipino in house nurse and a Nepalese doctor, Sri Lankan kitchen team and some local staff who work as government liaison. It is exceptionally international and so far we have a great camaraderie.

Not that we hold parties with the construction team. They lay their pipes and pour their concrete; we deal with owners and the hotel set-up. Together we simply co-exist on a tiny island for the same purpose: to renovate and re-open the hotel. At meal times in staff cafeteria, the workers let hotel staff jump line. Hotel staff will not sit with the workers. Indeed, they can improve their personal hygiene but who can blame them for smelling like an old shoe after working in the blazing sun the whole day? They eat twice as much as us office workers and still look hungry.

Today the doctor was in action not because of construction accident. A couple of Thai workers caught a lionfish from the lagoon and grilled it over a campfire, not knowing that lionfish is poisonous. One of them actually had a flat-line and the doctor had to shock him back to life.

As much as I want to keep my hands off the construction teams, since they are hired directly by the owners, I guess I will have to have a word with their managers if they speak English. I don’t want to send anyone in a body-bag off my island the first month I work here. It will not be easy as an island chief.

Day breaks at 6:50am in the tropics but everyday the mosque on the neighboring island broadcasts its prayer call at 5am. TI is literally a stone’s throw away from the next island, inventively called by the locals as Big Island (BI). Comparing to our tiny island of 20 acres, BI is three times the size.

Separated by a narrow but deep channel of approximately 50 feet wide, the current is swift and strong thus making it impossible to swim across to BI. BI is populated entirely by 900 locals and the main industry is fishing and cannery. The hotel is cash cow for BI since we rent 20 houses from the locals to accommodate some of the staff. Our 700 staff frequent the only barber and a local restaurant on BI as well, making it one of the richest islands in the country.

I took a stroll on BI today, accompanied by the HR director and the Chief Engineer. It was 10 o’clock but the sun was already searing hot. We boarded a tiny flat-bottomed boat from the loading dock and packed ourselves in with another 4 staff.  There was not enough room for sitting so we all stood facing the front of the boat. The journey took less than two minutes.

The jetty on the southern tip of BI was built by the hotel. Empty bottles, torn slippers and general garbage welcomed us on the beach of BI. The village was tightly constructed around a central courtyard of the size of a basketball field. Walls were made of broken corals which had been outlawed by the government since the 1990s. Houses were small, dark and dilapidated. Every house is equipped with a towering black plastic water tank issued by the government. The only fresh water source is from the rain.

Local women wore headdresses and long robes despite the humid tropical weather. Men loitered in the shade of banyan trees on incredibly uncomfortable looking ‘chairs’ made of ropes. Children ran around barefoot in tattered T-shirts. There was no smile, no ‘hello’, and no friendliness that I had been expecting from the famous tropical hospitality.

The shops that surrounded the central courtyard were doubtlessly established to attract tourists - guests at our hotel were the only tourists. Sadly, the souvenirs and trinkets that were on displayed looked like they were from any shabby tourist trap on Kuta Beach (Bali) or in Patpong (Bangkok). There is no local artifact at all, unless you want to buy the illegal shark’s skull or turtle shells.

In general the island was poorly maintained with garbage everywhere. It would be a hard sell as a “local highlights excursion” to our sophisticated guests who will pay $1000 a night after the renovation.

It has been a week since I came to this tiny island in the Indian Ocean. At the beginning I was reluctant to take this transfer. I had been looking at a city transfer after spending almost three years on an island. I had had enough with the beach, the sun and the coconut trees. Given the current economic climate, one cannot be too demanding. The previous GM has been put on an unpaid leave for the past six months. I should really count myself lucky that I got a transfer at all.

What really attracted me to come here is not the idyllic picture of this island painted by the website and the brochures. I came here to do a full renovation and re-opening of an existing property, and to help the current GM to open a brand new one on another island.

So far I am stationed on the island locally known as Tiny Island and for the sake of anonymity I shall refer to it as TI from now on. The property was built in the early nineties when terracotta floors, driftwood furnishings and lack of air-conditioning set the trend. Now twenty years later the guests became more sophisticated and the property had been in sore need of a facelift ever since the 2004 tsunami added further damage.

The owners held off the construction since last October. The rumor within the company was that they wanted to see if Obama got elected. When I arrived last week, guest bungalows on the east shore of the island had been sitting in a rubble for the past five months while the west shore still had villa intact.

It will be the first time that instead of patching up hotel rooms I would be directing a bulldozer to tear them down.