“I admit I worried a little about sensitivities when I was promoted from regional vice president to president but my colleagues have been so supportive and the camaraderie among us all is amazing,” says Rainer Stampfer, who from his Singapore base heads Asia Pacific for Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts.
Stampfer’s territory stretches from the Indian sub-continent to the east, to Australasia (French Polynesia, where Four Seasons has a resort on Bora Bora, is easier to manage out of the United States). He has 26 open properties and a pipeline of 12.
“I now have five regional vice presidents reporting to me. They are based in Maldives, Mumbai, Singapore, Hong Kong and Sydney,” Stampfer said. “Whereas when I was last running a hotel, Four Seasons Shanghai Pudong, China, and I had daily morning meetings, now I host weekly steering committee gatherings with all function heads. Since many of my team are traveling we use video conferencing.”
Stampfer could well himself be away – he travels around 180 days a year, meeting not only his GMs but also their owners, with whom this company prides itself on long-term relationships. “I do understand conflict, healthy friction and one party challenging another – not that owners and operators would ever want to work against one another to the detriment of the success of a property,” he said, with wide-open eyes.
Back at base, he has a team of 45, who cover design and construction, development, F&B, finance, HR, legal, marketing, portfolio management, residential and revenue management. “I am confident that there will be a steady flow of opportunities for expansion, both new-builds and such conversions as Hoi An (Vietnam), which we very successfully took over at the end of 2017. Perhaps to the surprise of some, I do not think we need a second brand at this stage. I personally believe that multi-brand operators cannot pay the same attention to luxury as a single brand.”
Stampfer reports to Christian Clerc, worldwide president, based at the company’s headquarters in Toronto, to which Stampfer, and the two other area presidents travel for corporate meetings four times a year (he professes to welcome a sudden cold-weather spell after the year-round equatorial heat of Singapore). He is, however, constantly in touch, via phone or WeChat, with both Clerc and his Americas and Europe, Middle East, Africa colleagues.
“Our Four Seasons app is changing the way we, and our guests, do business. Input a message to any hotel, or corporate, and it is picked up by someone at the receiving end in 90 seconds, and that person takes responsibility for the following communication,” he said.
Similarly, to facilitate bespoke personalization, Four Seasons is evolving guest profiles on from, say, eating preferences, which can change on a whim, to such longer-term comments as being left- or right-handed.
“Guests are changing and so too are expectations of the younger team members,” Stampfer adds. “It is no longer possible simply to tell GMs they are moving tomorrow to the other side of the world. Now there are so many considerations, including demands of partners and offspring. And one move sets a chain reaction of many other moves.”
In fact, Stampfer believes that a stay of four to five years is ideal for most GMs/ “There are some really successful cases where a GM is in place for way longer,” he added.
Stampfer laughs when he thinks back to his childhood, which he admits was somewhat aimless, relieved mainly by tennis and other sports. He toyed with banking but was persuaded to do a degree in Business Administration at the University of Applied Sciences Munich, Germany. Always fascinated by the lure of Asia, after graduating he joined Hyatt and then worked his way up the F&B ladder with Four Seasons before getting his first GM position in Koh Samui Thailand. He was appointed regional vice president while running Four Season Bangkok, and became president for the region in June 2016.
“I am so grateful because I am allowed to stretch my horizons every day. I really only miss actually being based in a hotel when it is the run-up to the festive season,” Stampfer admitted. “I have nostalgia every year at the thought of Christmas decorations and Advent markets and all the music and warmth at that time of year.”