“Some guest-facing individuals should be paid as much as senior executives,” says Hans Heijligers, CEO of IHG ANA Hotels Group Japan.
Take Junko Kano, manager of ClubInterContinental at ANA InterContinental Tokyo. She is a 15-year veteran, there at 7 a.m. most mornings to open the 100-seat club, and she knows all regular guests by name. “She is a main reason they return,” explained her ultimate boss. “The hotel industry has become too rigid at all levels, and it does not recognise the treasures who are not necessarily top management but it is often they who, in guests’ minds, differentiate one hotel from another.”
“You must adapt or you cannot function,” says Heijligers, a self-described disruptor. Only a few months into a role he took over January, he has so far not been able to change much. “Everything in Japan takes time,” admitted the Dutchman. His main success to date has been relocating his central office, and next he must find corporate bicycle parking. “In Amsterdam people leave their bikes anywhere, but in Tokyo you need dedicated parking,” he sighed.
Heijligers had done corporate before but now he is in charge, reporting to IHG’s Sydney-based COO Australasia and Japan, Karin Sheppard. ANA InterContinental is a ten-year-old partnership between IHG, which manages the properties, and ANA Holdings, a conglomerate that includes All Nippon Airways, ANA Wings and Vanilla Air. “The ANA name is really valuable in attracting weekend leisure business from around Japan,” Heijligers said. His 50-strong office, in Tokyo’s Toranomon district, offers financial, purchasing, commercial, operational and HR support to hotels. The partnership has 32 hotels and resorts, flying InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn flags—and he would really like to bring other IHG brands, especially Kimpton, to Japan.
What attracted him to this job? “I had never wanted to be a GM forever, and I think maybe this is the right place at the right time,” he answered quickly. “Just as others are changing the status quo of bookings and transport, I want to put some of my ideas into practice. It is time for a think tank for change, but first I must find out more about what is going on industrywide.”
Heijligers developed a love of travel thanks to his father, an international engineer who specialised in ship-building challenges. His career has taken him through Marriott in Paris, Hyatt in Cologne, Paris, Casablanca, Bali, Almaty and Johannesburg, with a brief spell at Boscolo, in France. He ran Harbour Plaza Hong Kong and opened Kempinski’s Commune by the Great Wall, Beijing, before returning to Johannesburg, to Palazzo InterContinental Montecasino, and then on to Southern Sun’s InterContinental Sandton Sun & Towers, also in Johannesburg.
He joined Jumeirah, first heading Jumeirah Emirates Towers Dubai before being in charge of the company’s new openings. For 18 months he was concept vice president operations for what was to have been Jumeirah’s Venu Hotels brand, subsequently aborted, so he moved to Singapore as area VP operations for Pan Pacific Hotels Group. He rejoined IHG as regional GM West Japan and GM InterContinental Osaka April 2014. His mentors along the way have been Hyatt legends Fred Huerst and Michel Jauslin, and Prince de Galles Paris’ Douwe Cramer, from its Marriott days.