The refurbishment of the InterContinental Hong Kong on Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront took five years and cost US$70million, but the project was finally completed at the end of last year.
New employees were recruited in a steady stream during the work. As each of the new restaurants, lounge areas, function rooms and bedroom suites was unveiled, so the hotel needed to staff these facilities.
Staff are still needed across all areas, including food and beverage, front desk and housekeeping. Some managerial positions are also available.
As with all hotels, the InterContinental knows that it is crucial that it hires the right people to represent its brand. Having spent a large amount of money to upgrade the hotel to what it calls 'platinum' standard, it needed to make sure that it also provided a 'platinum' service, explained director of human resources Ricky Wong Wai-kin. 'Guests travelling around the world stay at different hotels and every hotel is trying to do more. There is keen competition and so we have to exceed our customers' expectations. This is not done just with renovations. They are very important, but at the end of the day what we deliver is the service, so hiring the right people, with the right attitude is the key to our success,' he said.
The difficulty for hotels is that one single staff member with the wrong attitude could tarnish the hotel's reputation in the eyes of their guests. In order to reduce the chances of employing staff with the wrong mindset, the hotel tried to encourage as many applications as possible from people known to existing staff, said Mr Wong.
In this way the hotel could be sure that the applicant knew a bit about the job and the working environment, so their expectations were realistic, and the hotel could also find out a bit more about the history and work experience of the candidate, he said.