Under Leo Liu’s leadership, Wyndham Hotel Group has made giant strides in China over the past six years, nearly doubling its presence in that market from 700 properties to more than 1,470, with nine brands and more than 140,000 rooms.
Most recently, Wyndham returned to the Hong Kong market with the opening of a Ramada in January. With Liu at the helm, Wyndham has leapfrogged past other hotel groups that had much longer histories of development in China.
How did they get here? “We position ourselves as a challenger and game changer,” said Liu, Wyndham’s managing director and president for the Greater China region, at the company’s annual conference last year. “That is making a huge difference. We’re not positioning ourselves as the biggest American company in the world. It’s not meaningful to a simple Chinese consumer.”
Liu has been the primary driving force behind that game-changing ethos. He set the tone shortly after joining Wyndham by mounting an event that would make a big splash — at one of the world’s splashiest venues, the Forbidden City in Beijing.
“When I first joined the company, Wyndham was known internationally, but in China it still had a very low profile,” Liu recalls. “One of my first challenges was to find an efficient way, in a very short time, to raise the visibility of the brand.” His solution was to stage a huge gala at the site of the former imperial palace, with some 2,000 guests, including 1,000 Wyndham owners and general managers and several dozen Chinese celebrities.
His first hurdle was selling the plan to Wyndham corporate and to his team. “All of my colleagues and friends told me I was taking a huge risk,” he says. “But at the time I was so sure it was the only way to raise our profile and offer the right positioning for the company in this market.”
‘Make it happen’
Between online exposure, social media traffic and the celebrity presence, the gala raised Wyndham’ profile across China. People still talk about it five years after the fact, Liu says. And it bore out his philosophy: “If you believe in something, you have to really insist and make it happen.”
Two years ago, another game-changing strategy came when Wyndham partnered with China Brands Group to establish rooms designed with characters from “The Simpsons” TV show and Paul Frank’s whimsical cartoon animals. The rooms, which carry the theme from the lampshades and wall art to pillows and bathrobes, are a nod to Instagram devotees and to millennials, who can share their fondness for the characters with their families.
Liu, who served early on as a diplomat and spent about a decade with Accor Group, followed by executive roles at Costa Crociere and Envy Fine Art China, says those collective experiences helped shape his management style.
Characterizing his approach as “mission first, people always,” he believes that staying focused, having a clear direction and driving people to achieve the mission make up a leader’s most essential qualities. He is a firm believer in empowerment, delegating as necessary; he says doing so allows staff to reach their potential and helps the organization maximize results.
Aside from keeping their eye on the prize, as a leader Liu wants team members to stay upbeat. “Whatever is happening in your life, stay positive. Keep working with passion,” he says, adding, “that’s easy to say, but not so easy to do.”
Liu’s ultimate goal is to retain Wyndham’s position as the largest international operator in China, where 400-plus brands (by his account) make for an extremely fragmented market. “As you can imagine, the competition is fierce,” he notes, “so we have to move faster than the others. The most important thing is we have to stay focused.”
But it’s not just a matter of sheer numbers. “Being number one means offering multiple brands in multiple segments and new business models,” he says. “It means you always have to be the one leading the trends and offering a different experience to your customers.”
When he’s not busy plotting Wyndham’s expansion in China, Liu says he has taken up boxing to keep his energy levels high, and in the process he’s learned some lessons that carry over to his day job.
“Everyone outside of boxing thinks it’s all about using force to beat your counterpart. Or your speed — you have to be quick,” he observes. “Actually, it’s all about the pace. How you control your pace and your breathing.” Combining that measured approach with a well-developed understanding of what Chinese consumers want has been a winning strategy for this contender.