At the third Tern Travel Careers, veteran hotelier Jennie Chua shared nuggets of wisdom on what it takes to build a meaningful career in hospitality, including “it’s the hotel that makes you, not the other way round”.
In her early days starting out as a young hotelier, Jennie Chua, whose family went from riches to rags, remembers “living in abject poverty”.
“I would hide it from everybody because it was a source of embarrassment and even shame, but when you grow up and start becoming successful, you wear your poverty as a badge of honour,” said Singapore’s hospitality grand dame.
Speaking at the third Tern Travel Careers, an event focused on inspiring talent to enter the industry, Chua, an industry pioneer who carved her career with brands such as Raffles Hotel, Westin and Ascott, as well as the Singapore Tourism Board, reminded the audience of university students, graduates and young executives to never forget their roots.
She said that while the hospitality industry can often be quite glamorous, “it’s rather an artificial world, not a continuation of a day-to-day world. You must be able to, at the end of the day, come back home [to your real life] and be able to say ‘this is my life, I’m happy with it’.”
Behind the glitz, glamour, wining and dining that people often associate with a hotelier’s job, Chua said that one of the largest misconceptions in hospitality is that “hoteliers are just good PR people… very little brain after [that].”
“You need to know finance, strategy, marketing, F&B (understanding the concept of food presentation, hygiene), thinking like an engineer – otherwise, how will you get good engineers to work for you? – security, corporate communications…,” the list goes on.
“Running a hotel is like running a mini city. You need to know how to manage people and how to have people trust you, from the gardener to the Queen of England as your guest. How do you earn that trust? If you don’t have that, you can’t be a good hotelier.”
Veteran hotelier, Jennie Chua, spoke to an audience of aspiring travel professionals about the realities of working in hospitality
With that came an even stronger reminder that making a name for yourself in hospitality isn’t the same, nor as important, as trying to create a long-lasting impact during the span of your career. “I was the GM of Raffles Hotel for no more than five to six years, I have been working for 50 years of my life. Nobody remembers the 45 years.
“I identify in so many other ways… and I’m not complaining but don’t believe you make grand hotels. They make you.”
Chua used her own accolade of “Best Independent Hotelier in the World” after her tenure as GM of Raffles Hotel and how if she truly believed it, it’d be “a slippery slope”.
She put the award down to not her own skills as an hotelier but only because she was the GM of a high-end hotel. Her point being – there are plenty of talented hoteliers out there in the world, working for lesser-known hotels, who may not ever be recognised for their talents, no matter how exceptional.
This fable carried the moral that simply seeking recognition and reward is not reason enough to drive your ambitions in hospitality. Working to become truly skilled at something you enjoy doing, regardless of industry, is the key driver in building any successful career. It was true during the earlier days of Chua’s career and it is true now.
“You need to build a career based around what you have fun doing. Otherwise, you’ll leave the industry in less than five years.
“I don’t think anyone thinks of their last promotion on their death bed.”
But it doesn’t take a travel industry icon to tell us that career ambitions aren’t everything in life. The ‘millennial’ and ‘gen Z’ workforce already have a pretty strong grasp on the pursuit of work-life balance over the corporate climb when it comes to building a fulfilling career.
Nevertheless, when faced with the next rung on the ladder, it’s critical to keep your personal values front and centre when making critical career decisions.
“The word ‘integrity’ is not over-used… it’s a real word that should always guide you. If you need to stab someone in the back and climb a ladder of dead bodies to get where you want to be, it’s not worth it.”
