Settling Down, Betty Boothroyd and Boris Becker

CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca

I quickly settled down managing the Lodge and the Village in Habarana, North Central Sri Lanka, as the General Manager of both resorts. Our customers were mainly Europeans spending two weeks in Sri Lanka. They came on charter flights of key European tour operators represented in Sri Lanka by Walkers Tours, the travel arm of my employer, John Keells Group. Most of these travel groups stayed at the Habarana resort complex for two or three nights, while doing daily excursions to key ancient capital cities and historic attractions of Sri Lanka – Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Dambulla and Sigiriya.

Habarana is located right in the middle of the cultural triangle of the country, and relatively close to six of the eight UNESCO World Heritage sights in Sri Lanka. That strategic location was a key consideration when Habarana was chosen in the early 1970s to develop a resort with a unique concept – the Village, which opened in 1976. Encouraged with its overwhelming success, John Keells opened a more luxurious sister hotel – the Lodge, six years later. Having joined the group initially in 1977, I had some involvement with the Village and the Lodge project, until I left them in 1981. Four years later, in 1985, I re-joined.

In addition to managing the two resorts, I managed a large farm with the assistance of a qualified farm manager who reported to me. The farm cultivated vegetables and fruits to supply both resorts and used kitchen food waste to feed around 35 pigs raised there. This was a new experience for me. I enjoyed commencing the day with a long walk around the 40-acre property and a visit to the farm. While the farm marked one of our boundaries, another boundary was the Habarana Lake, with boating facilities for guests. A part of the complex land touched a forest with wild animals.

Changing the Culture of the Resort Complex

Our team of 18 managers worked day and night, irrespective of weekends and public holidays. Once a month, each of the managers took a week off to go home. Senior managers had family accommodation on a complimentary full-board basis. The two resorts were very busy during breakfast when tour buses lined up to pick up guests to take them for their day excursions. Lunch service time was always the least busy period for us. Most of us broke the day in two, with a few hours of relaxation before dinner service when the resorts came alive again with buffets, flamed food, cocktails, entertainment, and bands providing music for dancing.

After my first week in Habarana, I identified a major problem. The two resort management teams did not communicate with each other. It was a no-brainer that collaboration and sharing best practices would have benefited both resorts providing mutual benefits. However, stemming from some petty differences from the past and conflicts when the two hotels were led by two different hotel managers, the two teams continued to behave in a selfish manner. I realized that sorting this problem was my top priority to improve team spirit, productivity, efficiency and profitability.

I arranged 18 one on one meetings with the managers. Each of them was asked to make one positive suggestion to me to bring the teams closer. After that, I promoted both Assistant Managers as Executive Assistant Managers who had a joint meeting with me every morning, to make joint decisions related to common areas such as purchasing, training and staff welfare. I relocated my apartment to the middle of the complex in between both resorts.

I then arranged a mixed team water polo game every day with all 18 managers from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm. We alternated the venue between the Village and the Lodge swimming pools. Families of the senior managers watched us play. In between the game we had refreshments and tea for the management team hosted by each hotel on alternate days. That did the trick. Soon the old scars healed, we enjoyed each other’s company and worked together like one big family.

I changed my daily routine after that. After my long morning walk around the complex and my standing meeting with the farm manager, I attended a breakfast meeting with the management team of the Lodge. After that I worked in my office at the Lodge. Around noon, I went to the Village to have a lunch meeting with their management team. Those two meetings were chaired by each respective Executive Assistant Manager, who I empowered a lot and delegated all day-to-day operations. I was just an observer at these meetings, but privately coached both of them If I felt that they could have done better.

After lunch, I worked at my office at the Village till 4:00 pm. Then it was time for water polo. Around 6:30 pm we all came back to work hard. When my wife and I did not have any dinner obligations of hosting VIPs or tour operators, we had dinner with the two Executive Assistant Managers and their families in one of their apartments. Depending on the next day’s schedule, at times we played chess and monopoly till late. Soon I commenced a series of management development workshops for our team of 18 managers. They were very interactive and everyone learnt from each other. We became an excellent team.

One day the Managing Director of Walkers Tours, Ken Balendra called me. “Don’t you have excess cold room facilities?” When I confirmed that we did, he assigned me some additional duties. “Look Chandana, we are commencing a new company – Keells Food Products, with mainly meat products. Our vision is to eventually make it the largest such company in Sri Lanka. We have hired a master butcher from England who is setting up the factory operation, close to Colombo. We would like you to set up the food distribution network for Keells Food Products in the North Central Province.”

I immediately hired a Food Distribution Coordinator and bought a large refrigerated van. After that I reduced my direct reports to just five people – two Executive Assistant Managers, Farm Manager, Executive Secretary and Food Distribution Coordinator. Two Financial Controllers had a dotted reporting line to me.

VIP Guests

Occasionally we had visits by very important persons, and I personally looked after them. We organized a tree planting ceremony for each of those VIPs. Often, we gave them a choice of the plant, and arranged a plaque next to the tree indicating the name and the position of the VIP, as well as the name of the plant, its botanical name and the date it was planted. These tree planting ceremonies were popular. Whenever a VIP returned to Habarana, they wanted to see the growing plant and take a photograph next to it.

One of those VIPs was Betty Boothroyd (later, Baroness Boothroyd), Member of Parliament for West Bromwich, in the United Kingdom. Betty had many interesting stories to share and I liked her company. One day over dinner at the Lodge, she asked me, “Did you know that I was dancer, as a member of the Tiller Girls dancing troupe appearing in the London Palladium in late 1940s and early 1950s?” She then said, “I got into politics when my dancing career was shortened due to a foot infection.”

In 1960, she had travelled to the USA to see the Kennedy campaign. After that she began work in Washington D.C. as a legislative assistant to an American Congressman, for two years. Betty was also involved with the United Kingdom and Sri Lanka friendship Society, and that meant she was a regular visitor to Sri Lanka.

On a rainy day, she planted a carefully selected mango tree in our garden. Occasionally when she wrote to me, she asked how her tree was doing. A year later, she told me that she would visit Habarana again within two weeks. When I checked with the Farm Manager as to how her mango tree was doing, he casually mentioned “Her mango tree died!” I was not amused. I ordered the Farm Manager to find a mango plant which was around a year old and plant it in the same spot. When Betty returned, she did not notice that it was another tree. She took several photographs of it to show her friends in England.

Our friendship continued for a few years. In 1992 she was elected Speaker of the House of Commons, being the first woman ever to hold that prestigious position. When I sent her a congratulatory message, she invited me to her workplace. In 1993, during a visit to England, Betty kindly hosted me at the House of Commons. I was grateful to Betty for giving me such an opportunity.

Record Breaking July 7th

Riding the wave of executive optimism and team spirit, I initiated a series of new products. We opened a new à la carte restaurant at the Village and an art gallery at the Lodge, to showcase local artists. We also organized regular sport competitions to motivate our staff. We increased the number of buffets and cocktail sales in both resorts.

Sunday, July 7th, 1985, was a memorable day for me. A few managers gathered around the Don Martin’s Bar (named after the head barman with 40 years’ cocktail making experience at the famous Galle Face Hotel) at the Village. Knowing that the manager’s water polo game was relatively violent, a bar supervisor told me, “Sir, the villagers believe that July 7th is a bad day. Better avoid your water polo game, today”. We had a good reason to take his advice. Having watched the quarter-final and semi-final matches, we were keen to watch the men’s single finals of Wimbledon tennis, on the large TV screen at the bar.

We were shocked when a 17-year-old unknown tennis player from West Germany, Boris Becker won the title. Boris broke three main records that day. He was the youngest, the first German and the first unseeded player to win the greatest accolade in the world of Tennis.

“How many German tourists are arriving today?”, I asked the front office manager of the Village. When I heard that there would be over 120 West Germans arriving at the hotel within an hour, I motivated the Head Barman to create a new cocktail. Based on his experience in the past, he created a mish-mash cocktail with a blend of Tia Maria, black coffee, peppermint schnapps, and whipped cream and sprinkled chocolate powder on top. It was served on a side plate covered with black, red, and yellow striped paper napkins left by a West German tour leader. We named the cocktail ‘Boris Becker Serves’. We asked the bar staff to quickly do advance preparations to produce 100 Boris Becker Serves.

We then got the hotel artist to prepare a poster, with a message written in German by our food and beverage manager, who was trained in West Germany for five years. The poster was prominently displayed at the front office. When the coaches of hundreds of West German tourists arrived, I requested that manager who was fluent in German go to each coach and announce with the tour guide’s microphone, the good news about Boris’s big win and our cocktail to celebrate it. He wore a German hat and a tie while making those announcements to loudly cheering German tourists.

That day, we sold over 250 Boris Becker Serves, and broke all previous records at the Village for bar sales on a single day!