A man for Four Seasons 23rd Sep 2005 Back   “I thought I was going to retire happily ever after in Beverly Hills,” says William Mackay, the General Manager of the newest hotel in Hong Kong, the Four Seasons. The final piece to be placed in the IFC2 puzzle, the self proclaimed six star property, which towers over Victoria Harbour, comes complete with whimsical French restaurant, spa to die for, and two outdoor pools with underwater sound systems. It is the third hotel to open in as many months, following the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel and the Landmark Mandarin Oriental. Hong Kong has never had it so good, and as the glitterati swarm into the new outlets and restaurants it falls onto Mackay’s broad shoulders, and those of the rest of his team, to make sure they are not disappointed in Hong Kong’s hotel with a view. Certainly the lounge and bars are buzzing with hotel guests and locals eager to sample what the legendary Four Seasons has to offer. Not since the managing the Regent, before it turned into the InterContinental in 2001 with a flourish of a branding machine’s magic wand, have the Four Seasons had a foot in the SAR, and although a relatively new kid in town, its reputation goes before it. At the press briefing the day of the opening on the auspicious 8th September, Mackay announced that 11,000 applications had been made for the 850 jobs up for grabs in the 399 room hotel. Stats to be proud of. “Without question that is a reputation that has been very hard earned over many years and deservedly so,” he tells me, as he shows me into The Lounge. “We do take good care of people. It is about the creation of the environment and investing in people who have a sense of personal development. It matters that their contribution is recognized. Being appreciated and thanked for what you do, these are universal human needs. The Four Season’s philosophy is not complex to understand – it is based on mutual respect. “We believe in taking care of people because it translates into good business,” he continues. “It creates more loyal employees who will do more for the guest, who will pay more, so we can afford to do more for the employees. The two work hand in hand.” Notwithstanding the inevitable bottom-line oriented outlook, Mackay is a regular presence in the hotel’s swoopingly open, bright and airy lobby, talking to staff, guests and keeping a sharp eye out for anything that needs tweaking before it is noticed by the paying customers. The Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong is the refreshingly down to earth Scot’s fourth opening, in a career that has seen him travel far from Bristol, the city he grew up in. And tracing his past back I find that we have an aunt to thank for introducing him to the hospitality industry. “I had an aunt who ran a country house hotel in the UK,” he explains, “and spent school summer holidays working there. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do when I left school and wanted to go to university, and I thought you can do hotel management there. It is frightening how you make those decisions at 17 or 18 that affect the rest of your life, and you make them on the basis of such incredibly limited information. I was very fortunate that I fell into a business that I enjoyed and has enabled me to play to my strengths, which is what anyone has to do if you are going to do well and enjoy what you are doing.” From university he bravely stepped into the hallowed kitchens of the Connaught, where he cut his French fine dining teeth, in a manner of speaking. “It was very traditional, all French, everyone screaming and loving each other, but it was just the way they worked. The food was fantastic. It was a totally dedicated effort to produce perfection. I really learnt about quality at the Connaught - they didn’t realise how good they were. They had everything to a point of perfect pitch in how they serviced their customers. They were very focused on the basics and I’ve always believed in this business that you have to put more attention on the basics. “One of the challenges for us is everyone’s use of PR and image. What gets written about or what makes sexy copy is not what makes people want to stay in a luxury hotel: reliability, recognition, friendliness, warmth. I’m a total believer in quality running through and the wisdom of the consumer to know what’s what. Our guests are very sophisticated and can see through hype in two minutes.” The quality is assuredly there, understated in the clean space of the lobby, and overstated in the sheer Chinese screens in Cantonese restaurant Lung King Heen and the chandeliers in French Caprice. It is hard to imagine that just 18 short months ago, when Mackay started work here, it was all a shell. “When I first arrived it wasn’t even sealed in. This was open to the elements,” he says looking around The Lounge. “It was a concrete shell with the rain blowing in, very exciting. You influence the hardware to a degree, but much of it is already decided. But I was very involved in the selection and hiring of staff and the software, whether it is uniforms, table tops, the concepts for each of the restaurants… You almost have to pinch yourself. It seems two minutes since you were sitting talking in a project office – do you want cocktail tables or is this a room where people can dine? So you end up with medium height tables, a bit shorter than a dining table and a bit taller than cocktail tables. And then you think, oh god, is this trying to be everything to everybody and nobody will come here because it’s neither this nor that? Then, all of a sudden, it works. It’s a relief!” Renowned for his aggressively detail-oriented approach, it is in fact a relief to find that Mackay is prey to all the worries and doubts that the rest of us go through, albeit while making decisions with more significant consequences than most of us have to deal with. But such is the pressure of opening a hotel, and it is something he is becoming renowned for. “I’ve enjoyed it,” he smiles. “It’s a stretching experience. I think it’s very good for any hotel operator to do one. It’s part of what establishes you in terms of your credibility as a hotelier. I never thought of myself as an opener, but when you prove you can do it – well, people come to people who have had certain experience and done things well and then come to them again.” Having just celebrated his 50th birthday, the then General Manager of the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills and the Regional Vice-President of South California really did think he was going to play out his career in LA. “But then this came up, and I had been doing that job for eight years. It was an epiphany moment. I thought I shouldn’t just stay in this slot for the next eight years, because sixteen years is too long. I think hotels benefit from a change on top. Not every two years because I don’t think you’re on top of your job until you’ve been doing it two year. But every seven or eight years, no matter how successful they are perceived to be.” To some extent I serve at the pleasure of the Four Seasons. As long as they think I’m right for the property and want me here. I’d like to be here for a while, I enjoy Hong Kong. Like many others on the team I’ve given blood for this place for the last 18 months and I want the sense of seeing it through. The first few months of a hotels life are always quite challenging. You get an enormous amount of satisfaction when you see revenue stabilize and the whole profit picture comes into line. When you open a hotel it is inevitably costly. Over time revenue stabilizes and you can fine-tune the operation and hand it over and it’s a working organism.” When asked about retiring, the hotelier raised a quizzical eyebrow. “When that point comes I’ll know it, but one of the great attractions of the job is that it is so multi-faceted. You can never get bored with it. I think everyone in their lives should do a job at some point where they are standing on a production line doing something unbelievably boring, because once you’ve done that then you’ll never complain about having too much to do. I remember spending school holiday in Burgundy on a bottling line, bottling wine. I’ve never done anything so mind numbingly boring in my life. “So it’s a great privilege doing the kind of job I’m doing here. To be given a hotel like this, which is a once in a generation hotel, it’s an astonishing privilege to be given the chance to open it.”