“My professional life is all about making it easier for others, and that would not be possible without Dato’Rose,” says the general manager of the Shangri-La Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Manfred Weber, about his area director of communications, Dato’Rosemarie Wee.
“She is far more than mere PR. When I arrived March 2014, she introduced me to all the key players here in the capital of Malaysia, and she is so important in town, and indeed in the country, that many times clients book extremely valuable events, including weddings, with her direct,” explained Weber, adding that, like 45 others on the roster of 848 staff, she has been here since the 660-room hotel’s opening in 1985. At that time, she was plain Rosemarie Wee, wife of a Malaysian Airlines pilot (still an aviation wife, she was, in her own right, elevated to the royal status of Dato’ in 2013).
“The hotel has been owner-operated since the start, and this creates a community here at work,” Weber continued. Although all staff have medical insurance, he recalls more than once incidents when the owners have intervened personally to aid an employee’s family member who needed extra help, and covering the employee’s full wages while off on compassionate leave. Staff work five and a half days a week, they are paid above destination-average and the staff dining room, says their boss, is so attractive that he voluntarily eats there whenever he can.
“Malaysians love their food, and they eat at least five times a day. I also go out with colleagues, sometimes, to try local street food, and find out what is going on,” he laughed. Malaysians are also creatures of habit, to such an extent that many of the hotel’s outlets welcome the same locals several times a week.
“F&B overall, including banqueting, is easily 45% of total hotel revenue. We do outside catering for two up to 5,000 – last month we fed about 2,000 a full five hours’ drive away, which meant staying overnight,” explained the Austrian. Long-planned renovations see the hotel’s main ballroom closing temporarily in November: regular Chinese-Malay clients, insisting on their daughter’s wedding on a lucky day, in that venue that is lucky for them, have been mollified only by the happy couple spending the wedding night in the hotel after marrying elsewhere.
On the rooms side, at least 35% of guests are regulars. “One has kept a room for over 12 years, though he is travelling most of the time. Overall, 36% of my rooms business is domestic, followed by Australia and Singapore, and apart from holiday times it is nearly all corporate and MICE,” said Weber, who fell into all this by accident.
“Back home in Austria my goal was to be a professional mountaineer but my parents diverted me to engineering, which I found boring. I followed a friend to hotel school at Bad Gleichenberg, did a Hilton management training and worked my way up through cooking and F&B in Hyatt and Crowne Plaza,” he said. Experience with Peninsula and Ritz-Carlton led to his joining Shangri-La in 2011, and he now, in addition, oversees two other Shangri-La properties in Kuala Lumpur, and three in Penang.
“There is certainly nothing boring about this life. Not long ago Dato’Rose had her birthday party here, at the hotel. It was wigs-and-staches and everyone let their hair down. It was happiness all round,” said Weber.