CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil

President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada

Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum

chandij@sympatico.ca

Preparations to Hand Over

Towards the end of 1978, my employer, Walkers Tours/John Keells Holdings Group confirmed that I would be promoted to the Manager of their Hotel Swanee, Moragalla, Beruwala on February 1, 1979. They further confirmed that as soon as I moved to Hotel Swanee (which was a short drive from Hotel Ceysands), I would continue to manage the Food and Beverage operations and kitchens of Ceysands until the tourist season ended around early April, 1979.

I was happy to do both jobs for a short period of time. However, I was hopeful that my successor, particularly a new Executive Chef, would be appointed for Ceysands sooner than later. I was keen to do a professional hand over and help with an orientation for my successor.

During my last couple of months at Ceysands I focused mainly on training and developing the kitchen, restaurant and bar teams. For the 1978/1979 tourist season, the hotel needed around 12 new food and beverage servers. I recruited 24 young persons without any experience in the hotel industry mainly from nearby towns and villages. I used the current employees to spread the word around to their friends that Ceysands was a great employer. They were recruited as temporary trainees for a period of one month. They were paid minimum wages and provided with meals. All that was required of them was to attend the practical training that I conducted with the restaurant supervisors as my co-trainers.

On the first day, the trainees were informed that there would be practical tests held during the last week of their training period and only the top 12 trainees would be offered jobs. That competitive incentive made the initiative extremely successful. Basic English, German and French terms that were used in hotels were also included as a part of the curriculum. We arranged for continuous on the job training to the successful 12 trainees.

The most effective elements in this training and development program were the opportunities we provided for the new trainees to shadow more experienced servers. Learning through peers was powerful as long as the peers had learned the right skills and had some on the job training skills. To my great delight, some of the new trainees progressed well in the hotel industry. They developed quickly and became operational supervisors and managers within a few years. In the hospitality industry, employees with the right attitude and the basic skills training could progress rapidly without any formal certifications.

Preparations to Take Over

Well before starting the new job I focused on getting a better understanding of the culture, ownership, structure, concept, strengths, weaknesses, challenges and opportunities of Hotel Swanee. When I was a student of the Ceylon Hotel School four and half years ago in 1974, I was actually present at the opening ceremony of Hotel Swanee. It was an advantage that I knew the colleague who took over the management of the hotel on behalf of Walkers Tours in 1975, Jayantha Silva and the outgoing manager, Ratana Lawrence.

Hotel Swanee wasn’t a well-planned and developed hotel. However, when Walkers Tours took over the hotel, they wisely invested in major upgrades for the hotel soon after the opening. They hired respected professionals such as Major Bevis Bawa, arguably the best landscape architect of Sri Lanka, to upgrade and maintain the landscaping. As the first hotel to be managed by Walkers Tours/JKH, it was also an important learning journey for the group who eventually became the largest hotel operator in Sri Lanka. At the age of 25, I was proud to be identified as the new Manager. I was determined to raise the hotel’s standards, reputation and increase profits to a new level.

The majority of the rooms of Hotel Swanee were on the ground floor, except for ten rooms that were on the second floor of a new wing completed just before I was transferred. The open concept with a large seafront garden in the middle of the room wings and the front garden were beautiful. The key challenge was that the hotel was right in the middle of a small but a notorious village called Moragalla. The managers before me had a series of major problems with a few toughs from the village.

Prior to leaving for my new job at Hotel Swanee, Captain D. A. Wickramasinghe (Wicks), the General Manager of Hotel Ceysands gave me some useful advice. I felt that he did so not only as my previous boss, but also as my intended father-in-law. I was treated like the son he never had. He even started calling me by my nickname, given to me by his teenage daughter. “Chandi, you have done wonders at Ceysands, but one area you must improve in is public speaking and public relations (PR). Try to develop these skills to build up your confidence.”

I took that advice very seriously and made a big effort to improve my public speaking, PR and understanding of marketing. In later years, I became a graduate of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) in the UK, read for an MPhil/PhD in International Hotel Marketing at the University of Surrey, UK, and then became a university professor and a popular keynote speaker. Those made Captain Wicks very proud. He used to say jokingly, “Chandi learnt all this PR from me!” with a big smile. Captain Wicks was a good man.

Understanding a Violent Culture

I learnt more about the Moragalla village culture and its high crime rate from my peer, the new Assistant Manager of Hotel Ceysands, Sanath Kumarasinghe. He had previously worked as the Assistant Manager of one of the Aitken Spence hotels, Pearl Beach, which adjoined Hotel Swanee. Sanath and the manager of that hotel, veteran hotelier Stylo Aha, were exposed to some unpleasant incidents caused by the village thugs. I introduced myself to Stylo and sought his advice.

Morogalla and the rest of Beruwala area had a strange relationship with hotels since the early 1970s. There were a dozen competing local thugs who claimed one hotel per thug as territory. It was like territories controlled by the five Mafia families in New York during the heyday of organized crime. For example, Rathu Aiyya was the thug in charge of Palm Gardens Hotel, the area of Confifi Hotel was controlled by Rathu Peter and Nimal was the thug in charge of the area of Hotel Neptune. Basically, these thugs believed that the management, employees, security guards and suppliers were under obligation to show them respect, do favours and sometimes pay protection money.

Other thugs Abey, Goulding alias King and Newton controlled sections of the beach. They had a system to book the tourists as they walk towards the beach. It was done in a very organized manner. Once one beach boy booked a tourist no other beach boy could approach that tourist. Beach boys paid a percentage of their earnings to the thugs as protection money. Gradually as more hotels were built in Beruwala area the number of beach boys neared 1,000. This beach boy “tout menace” was a major problem for tourism in Sri Lanka.

The toughest thug, Solomon Mudalali was in charge of the area surrounding Hotel Swanee and Solomon’s elder son, Shantha, an army deserter, was like the Mafia underboss. I had heard that Solomon and Shantha had some major conflicts with the previous manager of Hotel Swane resulting in Solomon, Shantha and their tourist van to be prohibited from entering Hotel Swanee property. They were targeting attacking the Manager if and when he stepped outside the hotel gate.

These thugs controlled the areas where the hotels were built and the access to the hotels from Galle Road. Generally, they were not that violent during daytime, unless someone challenged their authority or disrespected them. Evenings were a different story, as hotels generally prohibited the locals access to hotel bars after sunset. Some of these thugs in the evenings acted like lions. Their Dutch courage resulted from consuming kassipu locally distilled under the protection of the thugs.

Over the years some thugs were eliminated by rival gangs and new leaders emerged. In later years, a new generation of leaders bearing some “funny” nicknames such as Kakka, Raththaran, Ibba, Sudu malli, and Mutgumuni were crowned as the new territorial bosses. Some who were able to survive the rivalry and sustain their power for a long period of time and even became rich businessmen and politicians.

I was happy to note that there was an up-and-coming thug aiming to take control of the Hotel Swanee area. His nickname was Milk Board Mudalai as he operated a tourist taxi from a nearby milk board outlet. He had the reputation of being unpredictable when angry. He was a rival to Solomon’s authority. They were both scared of each other. I was thinking of the good old strategy that worked well for the colonial invaders, “divide and rule!”

When Captain Wicks heard of my creative ideas of dealing with the village problems in my new workplace and residence, he wasn’t happy. Just before I left Hotel Ceysands on February 1, 1979, he gave me one more piece of advice. “Chandi, in dealing with these thugs, show that you are tough, but never practice your toughness. For heaven’s sake, no Judo fight challenges! They will shoot and kill you.” I detected the nervousness in his voice. I smiled but made a mental note to take his advice seriously.

Action on My First Day

Owing to threats and challenges from Solomon, my predecessor had already left the hotel discreetly. Therefore, one of the senior Directors of Walkers Tours, Mr. Norman Impett, accompanied me to Hotel Swanee. After showing me to my office and the manager’s apartment by the swimming pool and seaside, he introduced me to the management team of five and the manager’s personal secretary.

He then said, “Chandana, take care. This is a tough hotel to manage, but I think that you will do well here. All the best!” He hurried away and I was left in charge. I was thinking of what action I should focus on first on my first day. I decided to take the bull by the horns in dealing with the main problem of the hotel.

I called Gamini Soyza, the Restaurant & Bar Manager to my office. Based on my earlier research, I knew that Gamini was a nephew of the medical doctor turned businessman and politician, Dr. Neville Fernando, who had built the hotel. Having worked at the hotel from its inception, Gamini knew the area well. “Do you know where Solomon Silva lives?” I asked Gamini. When he nervously said that he did, I told him, “Please go tell him that the new hotel manager would like to have a chat with him as soon as possible, ideally this morning”. Within 10 minutes Solomon showed up at my office with a loud bang on the door.

I welcomed him in Sinhala, “Āyubūvan Mudalali, thank you for coming to see me at such short notice. Please take a seat”. I pointed to a chair in front of my desk and closed the door. Instead of sitting behind my desk, I sat next to Solomon. Then there was a short period of silence while we looked at each other trying to get the hang of each other as we had never met before. Solomon was about twice my age and I guessed that he was around 50. He was dressed in a white shirt and a white sarong. He had a slight stammer and was curious about my intentions.

I told him that I knew of the past conflicts he had with my predecessors, but indicated that I wished to have a good rapport with important leaders of the village like him. I encouraged him to talk about his family and business interests. Within 30 minutes I learnt a lot about Solomon. His late father had been a well to do person owning a few fishing boats and a toddy tapping business. Due to a drinking and gambling addiction, his father had sold some of his seafront land at a low price to the developer of Hotel Swanee.

“You mean, this land would have been yours?” I inquired. He said, “Yes” and became a little emotional. He explained how he felt deeply insulted when he, the son of the previous owner of the property, and his van were barred from entering the land now owned and developed by rich outsiders. “I hated it when my fellow villagers laughed at me behind my back. Respect is very important to me” he confessed.

A Negotiated Settlement

When I asked Solomon what is his main business was, he said, “Tourism.” He told me that he made a living mainly by arranging tours around Sri Lanka for the guests of Hotel Swanee. Then I asked him to bring his tour van and show it to me. It was a reconditioned Toyota HiAce, but kept clean and tidy. At the end of our discussion, I gave him permission to park his van in the car park inside the hotel premises.

I called the hotel Maintenance Engineer who looked baffled and uncomfortable, when I instructed him to immediately get a prominent sign board painted and have it hung near the front office. It displayed the registration number of the van and confirmed that “Mr. K. Solomon Silva was the owner and driver of the vehicle. It was authorized by the Management of Hotel Swanee for tours of our guests.”

With that single gesture, Solomon became my biggest fan in Moragalla. He was very happy that the new manager had shown him respect and helped his reputation and business, all in one day. At that point I told him, “Solomon Mudalai, this is not free. You need to pay the hotel a monthly fee.” He looked somewhat surprised. I wanted to signal that the arrangement was not for protection’s sake but a business deal. We negotiated immediately and agreed on a reasonable fee. I then called the hotel’s Chief Accountant and asked him to draw up a contract and ensure that the money was collected on the first of each month.

After Solomon and I signed the contract, I told him that now he needed to do me a favour. I sought his help in getting the locals to leave the bars by 7:00 pm every day. We agreed and during my term as the Manager of Hotel Swanee, all villagers left the bar and hotel premises obediently and promptly on or before 7:00 pm, with one exception. Solomon usually overstayed by about 30 minutes to show all the other villagers that he was special. I turned a blind eye to that. I clearly understood his action and decided “not to sweat over the small stuff.”

Before Solomon left, I took a quick walk with him through the hotel garden and walked on the beach. Hotel employees as well as the beach boys/touts were surprised to see us together. After that we shook hands and agreed to keep in touch if the hotel ever had any village problems. My success on day one built up my confidence.

Getting Ready for the Next Steps…

Often newly promoted unit managers in any business tend to learn from previous best practices and follow the norms. Going with the flow is the safest and easiest. In my case I decided to be different instead of copying others. I needed a free hand to build an innovative management team aligned with my vision.

The next step was to focus on preparing for my first-ever public speech. I fixed a day to address the 100-member employee team within my first week at Hotel Swanee. Before that I got to get to know the five managers and senior supervisors in one-to-one meetings. I also wanted to meet the union leaders, West German tour leaders, all the repeat and long stay guests. More fun next week…