DAY 6 (21ST JULY 2016)

WYNDHAM GRAND PLAZA ROYALE HANGZHOU

The first visit of the day was Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou which located near to West Lake, Hangzhou. We have arrived at the Hotel at 09.45am. Once we stepped out from the bus, the hotel staff welcomed us without any hesitation. The staff led us to the hotel lobby, then we have met Miss Cherry. She was the person in charge for our visit. All the way she was very warm and lovely. Every staff always put a smile on their face. It really showed that they have a very good customer service.

Figure 34 Ms. Cherry

About 5 more minutes, Miss Cherry and her colleague led us to the meeting room. They have prepared some refreshment for us such as fruits, sandwiches, coffee and of course the famous Hangzhou Long Jing Tea. Once we are ready, we have started with a presentation from the representative of Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou, Miss Cherry.

Brief introduction of the Wyndham Worldwide

·         Headquarter in Parsippany, New Jersey USA.

·         Traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol of WYNN.

·         One of the largest hospitality companies over the world.

·         Wyndham Hotel Group is the world largest and most diverse hotel company with 7670 hotels.

·         It is one of the largest franchise & management companies.

Figure 36 The Hotel looks like a Butterfly.

Figure 35 The View from Hotel

With an incomparable location in the heart of Hangzhou’s Business District and steps from the picturesque West Lake, the Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou hotel merges a wealth of elegant facilities and amenities with distinctive, world-class service to create long-lasting memories for travellers seeking a sophisticated, upscale experience. Among Hangzhou Hotels, this location at the northeast corner of West Lake with attractions, shopping and dining nearby, and adjacent to several local and provincial government offices, is the premier choice of business, leisure and conference travellers alike.

The international segment of Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou is 5 star + (Luxury) and the international Brands is Wyndham Grand Hotels. The opening time of Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou is at 30th November 2009. They are the top on OTA Ranking system especially in Ctrip and TripAdvisor.

            As we know, China’s Hotel industry are developing and growing significantly at a very fast pace of time. Therefore, we had with us Mr Chris Dexter the Vice President of Operations, Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hotels & Resorts to share his insights on how he brings in so much of energy, idea, honesty, attention to detail and positivity in his line of work. Despite not being able to converse fluently in mandarin, he has successfully led his team that consists of more than 300 staffs which includes 100 interns who are from mainland China and also from the foreign country such as Western Europe. Needless to say, the employees are equally important in the management of five-star hotel in order to remain competitive in the industry with skilful and well- equipped workers.  

                Mr Chris Dexter motivates his employees in term of financial incentives which is driven by excellent performance at work. Over the past 5 years, Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou hotel has been rewarding their employees during Chinese New Year. Usually up to 90% of his colleagues will receive the 3 months’ salaries bonus in term of angpao while the other 10% might missed the bonus due to disobeying the rules and regulations fixed especially after getting so many warning letters from the company. This is to value and motivate employees to work hard and be efficient.

Figure 37 Mr Chris Dexter

            Mr Dexter always believe in being committed towards his job and tried his best to keep improving Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hotel so it could gain profit in term of return on investment from the shareholders. Throughout the 10 years’ record made by the hotel, it has successfully managed to return the profits to the shareholders without failed. There was some concern about working on the management site as being in hotel industry can be said like acid company because it is purely a management contract, Wyndham Group does not own the hotel but instead they be the franchisor in order to exempt themselves from paying management fees, brand fees, incentive fees and many more extra charges if they own the hotel.

            Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou hotel also tried in many ways to obtain competitive advantage of the company by applying the concept of being different from their competitors. They have applied standard operating procedures (SOP) to be the benchmark as they believed every hotel is superior in their own way. They operate the hotel in their own way so they would be able to develop it more and get more control from the hotel owner as they are only managing it rather than owning and having rights on the property. With the existence of G20 in Hangzhou, Mr Dexter are able to push forward his idea in tightening the hotel security by placing digital CCTV all around the places whether its inside and outside of the hotel in order to protect the staff and guests. Moreover, the facilities provided by the hotel are fantastic because the money spent are for the right purposes which would benefit the hotel now and in near future.

               Not only that, they have learnt the culture of others for an instance Muslims whereby Wyndham Grand Plaza Royale Hangzhou hotel believes in treating their guests equally. Therefore, in order to cater the needs of their Middle Eastern guests from Saudi, they have with them Arabic speaker to ease the communication and prepared the prayer mat for the Saudi Arabia guests. In term of food for breakfast, Wyndham Hotel has segregated the area of non-pork so that the guests from all around the world would choose Wyndham as their first choice of hotel.

GE CHINA TECHNOLOGY PARK (GENERAL ELECTRIC)

      The second visit of the day would be GE China Technology Park in Shanghai, which is also known as General Electric Company (China). General Electric is a multinational conglomerate company. It operates in various segments such as aviation, healthcare, oil and gas, transport, power and water, capital, lighting, energy connection and renewable across 130 countries in the world.

         

Figure 38 The visitor self-service machine

    Once we arrived at the main lobby of the company, we were required to register as visitors. All of us were given our own adhesive name tag which was to be stickled on the shirt. One of the representatives from GE who was in charge of the visit came after a few minutes and led us to the meeting room at level 3.Upon entering the meeting room, we were welcomed by several high-positioned managers from GE - Mr. PH Lim, Mrs. Peggy and Mr. Victor. They were also had been accompanied by three interns from GE Management Trainee Programme. Mr. PH Lim is a Malaysian, so he asked every each of us to introduce ourselves to get to know more about us before proceed to more serious discussion session. Once we were finished, we have started straight away with Q&A session to make the discussion more interactive and deterministic.

    








       

      Brief introduction of the General Electric

     - Headquarter in Fairfield, Connecticut.
     - Traded on the New York Stock Exchange under Dow Jones and S&P 500 components.
     - An American multinational conglomerate corporation incorporated in New York.
     - Has approximately about 305,000 number of employees.
     - Ranked among the Fortune 500 as the 6^th largest firm in the U.S. and 14^th most profitable.

The visitation was divided into two sessions, a roughly 45 minutes of roundtable session and office tour. The roundtable session was attended by several high-positioned representatives from GE. They were Mr. Frank (Human Resource Business Partner), Mr. Lim Poh Huat, Ms. Peggy, Mr. Victor and a few permanent staffs who were joining the company’s training programmes. The roundtable session was conducted in two-way conversation in order to create better learning and sharing environment

Discussion Session

            During the roundtable session, we have discussed about shared services, the programmes available for fresh graduates and last but not least, leadership. Today, GE is still accelerating its establishment of shared services and its shared services centres are called global operations. We have learnt that shared services are standardization and centralization of services and business functions in one low cost location to enable economies of scale, expediency and efficiency in business operation.

Shared services enable the company to provide value to the business in the form of simplified processes and increase services performance by replacing dispersed IT system with a single, modern technology. Shared services also reduce overall costs such as staff and infrastructure costs, taxation and audit fee. Besides, shared services can improve professionalization whereby it provides better opportunity for the specialists to focus on their skills. We’ve learnt that despite all the advantages of shared services, there are still some challenges such as communication. It is crucial for the employees to have practical language skills and cultural understanding when serving clients abroad.  

GE Early Career Leadership Programs

            One of the interesting subject that has been shared by the interns was about the Management Trainee Programme. GE provides various training and development programs for its employee that aimed to develop fresh graduates’ leadership and technical skills through challenging assignments and world class training. From the discussion, Mr. Frank mentioned about a few leadership programs such as Human Resources Leadership Program and Financial Management Program.

This program is a two years’ program where the staffs who joined this program will be rotated periodically to different department and division based on their preferences. Through the rotation, interns have to complete trainings, assignments and attend global conferences to maximize their exposures. The learning curve is really steep. After completing the program, GE will offer suitable position for them based on their performance. GE’s programs provide a good platform for fresh graduates to apply what they have learnt and further polish their skills. Those employees shared about their past experience and one of the key messages that they passed down to us was determination and attitude are the keys to success.

Leadership Philosophy

            Mr Frank, Mr Lim and Ms Peggy shared with us their own leadership experiences and leadership style too. Mr Frank said that he will hold his staffs accountable for their actions and outcomes that they are responsible for. However, he said to foster accountability in his staffs, crystal clear communication on his expectation towards his staffs, how he measures improvements and success are crucial when working in a team to achieve the same goals.  He said with clear communication on the expectation, one can always be reminded on what it the ultimate goal, which also prevents him from moving off track and be motivated.

Office Tour

            The Q&A sessions completed within 45 minutes. After the Q&A session, we moved to the next session which was office tour session. Here, we were brought to visit the office surrounding where we could see the environment and condition of the office. This is a great opportunity for us to see closely how the working atmosphere; what are the facilities provided to the employees; how the employees were divided by department/division; how the department/division was placed in office according to their nature and confidentiality of the department/division itself. GE office is really big and the environment is quiet, serious and well organized. We can see all the staffs were busying with their work at their own cubicles. Along the corridors, there were some motivational quotes or departments’ objective sticking on the walls of corridor to keep the staffs motivated. We were told that the departments or divisions are placed within the office according to their nature and confidentiality. We ended out visitation with a group photo taking session. After that, we left and headed for dinner before going to Shanghai Pudong Airport.