Spearheading Hilton’s largest UK hotel

What is your background with Hilton, and what led you to the London Metropole?

I have been working with Hilton for about 10 years in China. I started in Beijing as a director of operations at the Hilton Beijing, a beautiful, small boutique-style Hilton very close to the Forbidden City. After a few years in Beijing an opportunity came up to open the Hilton Chengdu in Western China in the Sichuan Province. It was my first general manager posting, leading Hilton’s first opportunity to plant a flag in Chengdu with the opening of a new 395-room hotel.

However, due to the pandemic, I was locked down in Shanghai and didn’t have the opportunity to see my family for two years. During that time I was looking for a new opportunity and the chance to join London Metropole really jumped out at me, it’s such a fantastic posting. It’s a challenging job in a dynamic city, and it ticked all the boxes for me both personally and professionally, so I’m absolutely delighted to be here.

What challenges does spearheading the hotel after its refurbishment present?

Right now, we are going through a renovation and then repositioning of the hotel, and trying to let the market understand what the new hotel is all about; the strengths, the selling points, and really getting across the story of the new property. We’re trying to help people understand why they should be giving us a second look, even after so many years established in the City.

It is an incredibly attractive challenge. When you are part of a hotel that has gone through an opening or through a major renovation, you have the opportunity to really guide and shape the culture in a direction that will match all the new features of the property. You can give the customer a different and refreshed sense of what it is about, and help team members to better articulate what that is to guests.

What makes the London Metropole unique amongst Hilton’s portfolio?

One of the aims from the refurbishment was to give guests a sense that this hotel was uniquely London, and reflective of our surroundings. The hotel design aims to tell the story of the city, from East London to West. You walk into the hotel into the revamped lobby, and you have very much a sense of East London.

You’ll see right away our bow bar, which was named after the bow bells, the story of East London. And then from East London, you walk into central London where you might find different types of markets. That’s where the central heart of the hotel is, as well, the tower wing over to West London, with which is our west wing of the hotel. And you’ll see different design cues throughout the entire project as you move from east to west.

I think with the cooperation between Hilton and our owners (Henderson Park), our shared interest in developing something specific for the local market was met.

What is there to look forward to in the MICE sector going forward?

When Henderson Park purchased the hotel and decided to invest, there was a great cooperation with Hilton, and quite a bit of planning on what the direction was going to be. We sought to answer a few problems; one of the goals we came up with was to transform ourselves into the number one MICE hotel in Europe. We have the capabilities to provide a service that no other hotel can; When clients are looking to cater to 1000 delegates for an event, we’re just about the only hotel in London that can handle that request.

We can definitely see the momentum returning in the MICE sector. You can see that people are going to continue to want to reconnect, and we hear this from our clients. Even though I don’t think that we’re ever going back to spending five days a week in the office, it’s still important for leaders to get their team together for a few key events throughout the year. In a remote world, those key events become even more important, and we wan’t to cater to that.

What’s on the agenda from the start?

Primarily, we want to have a comprehensive evaluation of customer service and develop it further. This hotel has amazing potential and is an amazing product, and our team members are second to none in the industry. It’s important to me as the general manager to get everyone working towards that same objective, and to build a culture that everyone can identify with, and create a sense of pride in working here. If we can achieve that, I believe that will translate into an amazing experience for our customers.

It’s such a key ingredient; If a hotel has a great culture, you can feel it as soon as you walk through the front food. Friendly people at receptions, the security team members looking at you and saying good morning, the experience that you have with the team member who’s cleaning your room. You’ll know right away when you’re in a hotel with a great culture, because you get that feeling everywhere you look.