HOW often have you heard the lament ''you just can't get the right staff these days'' after some minor glitch at a Hong Kong hotel? After an event earlier this month, Hilton general manager James Smith will doubtless be joining the chorus of disapproval.
Smith was visiting The Ritz Carlton's Presidential Suite for the territory's first single malt whisky tasting, which is the nearest to paradise on earth for a Scotsman like him.
He was so taken with the proceedings he decided to call the Hilton Grill to get the staff there to explain to a guest he was meeting for dinner that he would be late.
In his piercing Caledonian tones, readily overheard by the other judges, Smith told the Hilton's operator: ''Smith here, get me the Hilton Grill on the second floor.'' Then, as his face creased in bewilderment, the hotel boss barked out: ''Smith! Smith! Smith! What do you mean how do you spell it! This is James Smith - your bloody general manager!'' THE opening of the Conrad Hotel back in August 1990 was, in hindsight, very badly timed. To be fair, few people could have predicted Saddam Hussein would be marching the Iraqi army into Kuwait in the same month. But it meant the hotel started in a costly slump as the tourist trade dried up because travellers feared Scud missiles were going to blow their aircraft out of the skies.
Four years later, Conrad general manager Dario Regazzoni is taking no chances with the $32 million refurbishment of the hotel lobby and ballroom.
He has engaged a fung shui man to poke around the hotel and look over the plans, and especially the vast mural that a team of four French artists is currently painting. The original plans for the artwork included a tiger. ''What sort of tiger is it?'' the fung shui man demanded. ''If he is too fierce then his aggression will spread through the hotel!'' So the tiger was culled from the design. Soon afterwards the projected columns with a baroque twist were given the thumbs down on the grounds that the deliberate distortion might create the same effect in the rest of the Conrad.
Happily the artist, Benoit Dupuis, had worked in Hong Kong and was aware of the vagaries of fung shui, and was willing to amend his design. However, Regazzoni's adherence to local customs goes only so far. The lobby and ballroom open on September 1 - was this date auspicious? ''Er . . . no, not really,'' a bemused Regazzoni said. ''That is the day I wanted it to open.'' EACH week the number of lighted windows in the Harbour City development drops as tenants move out in advance of owners Wharf Holdings' plans to raze it and build offices and flats in its place.