With a career that began with a hotel apprenticeship in Singapore in 1990, Kung Teong Wah rose from the ranks and became the man at the helm of one of the city-state's best-known hotels. His talent with managing people and ability to see the big picture have definitely contributed to his success as a hotelier. Teong Wah's wisdom is hard earned and, as you read on, you'll understand why he is credited for shaping the hospitality landscape in Singapore and even Asia.     

On the lookout for trends

Trends are by nature fleeting and an astute hotelier needs to see the big picture and have the sixth sense of a visionary to steer a five-star hotel to continued success.

What are your thoughts about the hospitality industry in Singapore and all of Asia now? What are the emerging trends? 

There are two sides to food and beverage. One is hotels and the other is independent restaurants. Hotels, in general, are often on the discount model. They are not into concepts nor do they think about things such as service, catering to the five senses, having a unique selling proposition, and the like. The more you offer those, the more guests come. But once you stop, everyone is gone. Independent restaurants, on the other hand, focus on service and food, but, because of spatial and funding constraints, some survive and others go bust. They won't last long if they don't have business for half a year. Meanwhile, hotels depend on rooms so, they always have a model that caters to the status quo. However, we are now adapting to the type of customers that are coming in. These guests don't [respond] as much to the old Facebook model. Yes, they are more attuned to social media marketing but the marketing approach of the future will be search marketing and Word of Media.

Our marketing strategy focuses on a combination of social media and search. One is for cost-per-mile exposure. The other is to look for customers. Whoever knows mobile will win the game. Those who know how to reach the right customers with the least amount of marketing dollars will be the winners. 

Data is the future of marketing

In the digital age, it is important to make informed decisions based on data, which is used to predict outcomes and lessen the guess work in a complex task such as hotel and restaurant management.

How important is data in hospitality?

Data is everything. Someone from our side is dedicating 30 percent of their time to looking at TableCheck data. We look at revenue by day, week, meal periods, segmentation, cancellation, and no-shows by the hour and use all this data to make business decisions. For example, we have more dynamic pricing on days that have low turnout. We then create additional meal periods when we see the pace go up like say, the Mother's Day. We create new urchin tracking modules or UTMs in every single marketing activity that we do. For example, if I have a marketing budget of $500 for Mother's Day on social media, I want to know how many bookings can come from that campaign.

TableCheck can create UTMs to track marketing performance, then we can pull data from there to find out what the return on investment is for that particular campaign. TableCheck has a lot of data. I am thrilled to share that we've achieved an impressive year-on-year growth of 50% in our ADD business, thanks to our innovative use of data from the TableCheck Table Management System.

Very few establishments have their segmentation done correctly. You have to know why the customers are here. Are they here for a celebration or business? Are they here because of an event you put up or a family gathering? If you do your segmentation properly, you will know exactly where and how to go about marketing.

PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering's USP

Five-star hotels in Singapore are competing for the same clientele. Therefore, Teong Wah has the gargantuan task of making PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering stand out from the pack. 

What do you think distinguishes PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering? 

What the customer wants is to have good food, value for money, and good service. This is basic. It's all about how you do your menu engineering. You should know exactly what the unique selling proposition or USP of your restaurant is and how to put your best dish forward. You should be innovative in using cost-effective yet top-quality products for high-value items. You also have to know the end goal of your customers upon arrival. You need to know what emotional connection to make because this is what will make people remember you. Serving a freshly baked croissant from the kitchen is better than serving a fresh croissant from a buffet table.

Lunchtime at Lime Restaurant is generally for business meals. Nighttime is for entertainment. On weekdays, it’s the younger crowd that gathers for socializing and networking. Weekends are generally for family gatherings. As I said, you have to know your demographic, source market, and segmentation. 

Happy staff, happy guests

People are at the heart of every endeavor and treating the staff well always translates to great customer satisfaction.

What is your leadership style? How do you foster collaboration between different departments? What's your day like? 

There's an adage that goes, “happy staff, happy guests”. It's true, right? I can't see all the guests in the hotel, but I can see all my staff. So, when they are happy, we'll have happy guests. Another thing that we must do is gainshare, which means when I make more money, then the staff gets more money. We have incentives in place. When the staff is incentivized, they put in great work and, in turn, there's good revenue for the restaurant. There is another invisible force: they upsell, take another five to 10 covers even in the early or late hours – they are willing to do that. They become motivated because they have ownership of the business. 

What makes people want to stay and work for you?

When there is reduced turnover, you have a steady team of people with high capability. When you hire people with a 30 percent higher salary, it doesn't mean that they are 30 percent more capable. So, we do staff reskilling and job redesigns. Hiring people means upskilling them to have better jobs, skills, pay, and life. Our front office, security, bell concierge, and reservation staff are on a four-day workweek and have three days off. We have low attrition because of that.

We care about the uniforms, too, because of all the walking the staff needs to do. We have managed to reduce the weight of the uniform by 40 percent. We do everything to make sure the staff is more productive and can provide better service. We also see to it that they are less tired and more energized. We needed to check how many steps they had to make so we geofenced the restaurant and measured almost everything. 

“Sustainability is in our DNA”

More and more businesses are finding value in doing the right thing. With customers becoming more concerned about global issues such as climate change, Teong Wah has made sustainability one of the hotel's priorities.

The hotel won sustainability awards. How do you balance revenue strategy with sustainability? Running a hotel costs a lot of money and so does being sustainable. 

Being sustainable seems more expensive, but, in the long run, when you now have global warming and heat waves in Singapore, you know you're doing the right thing. It may not directly impact your guests' experience. It may not directly impact your business. But, now, people are more aware of sustainability and PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering has sustainability in its DNA. I strongly believe we will earn the money back. My hotel has over 15,000 plants and we spend a lot of money on maintaining them. In return, we have one of the best-performing hotels and the highest-rated service in terms of rooms and catering. I believe that, if everybody does their part, we can make the world a better place. 

Lime Restaurant and Bar

Address: 3 Upper Pickering Street, Singapore 058289
Website: PARKROYAL COLLECTION Pickering, Singapore
Reservations for Lime Restaurant: TableCheck