My days working at the Hilton Hotel in Bangkok as Head Tennis Coach were numbered when the new General Manager arrived. New General Manager’s like to announce their arrival with acts of change, whether the change makes sense or not. I have seen some new General Manager’s cut down trees, replace ponds, alter a lobby and change personnel, anything to demonstrate that they have arrived and they are the boss.
When I first arrived at the hotel in 1986, some 15 months earlier, I had made it my mission to increase the number of hotel guests that took lessons. In the beginning 60% of lesson revenue came from local Bangkok residents and only 40% from guests staying in the hotel. To do this I created a register of the guests who took lessons. I would write to thank them once they left the hotel and returned to their home countries and if they were coming back to the hotel, I had a tennis greeting card under their door when they arrived. This extra effort was appreciated and many guests began to come back just for the tennis. Sometimes they would contact me instead of the hotel reservation office to book room nights! This experience showed me that it was the small things that brought a guest back to your hotel and not the size of the room nor the standard of your restaurants, as these things don’t really vary that much from hotel to hotel. The guests I made friends with during that time were glad to have someone they knew and could call a friend around the hotel, particularly after a long day of business meetings.
When I finally got the call to meet the new General Manager in his office I knew what to expect. His wife and son were keen tennis players and I was using the courts more and more as the number of lessons kept growing. I was told that the contract would be terminated because nobody (from his family) could get on the courts.
Initially I was disappointed that he had not looked closer at the effort I was putting in to create repeat business but soon realized that I needed to move on with my career also. I did however want to teach him a lesson.
I began to notify all my contacts that my contract with the hotel had been terminated and that I would be leaving. This I could have done after leaving but by informing them beforehand I knew a storm of protest would develop. Sure enough the GM began to get letters (this was pre-email) from disgruntled guests saying that the tennis facility was the only reason they kept coming back and that without the tennis they would change hotels on future visits. The General Manager was furious but I simply said that I was informing my “friends” that I was moving on.
The best of these protest letters arrived about 3am in the morning. The phone rang in my room and a well spoken woman informed me that she was Mr. Alan Hasenfeld’s secretary and that he was sending a letter to the Hilton General Manager; would I mind listening to the letter before she sent it? She proceeded to read the letter which outlined how many room nights Alan’s company, Hasbro Toys, had spent at the Hilton and that if Paul Dale left they would consider changing to another hotel in Bangkok. Alan Hasenfeld was the president of Hasbro Toys and had a personal wealth of 400 million dollars. We had become close friends during his many stays at the Hilton Bangkok and he was letting the Hilton know that he was ready to change if his tennis was taken away.
I did eventually leave the Hilton and later that same General Manager left the Hilton to work for a rival hotel chain. That hotel chain was Four Seasons Hotel Group and through another close friend, I recommended to the owner that he be sacked, which he was. Revenge was sweet.
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