Inside Scoop of Hospitality with Ms. Vipanant Kusolmanomai

Ms. Vipanant Kusolmanomai is the Front Office Manager of the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok who has been in the hospitality industry for almost 15 years.

Why have you chosen a career in hospitality industry, particularly in the Front Office Department?

Ms. Vipanant starts working in the hospitality industry at the age of 23 years old, when she discovered that working in the publishing office is not the career she wants to pursue. Inspired to try something new and unique, she decided to join the hospitality industry in the front office where she can interact with the guests. From then her passion kept growing, from the simple joy when interacting with the guests to the proud when she can make impact on guest journeys, creating their wonderful memories they forever cherish.?

Moreover, Ms. Vipanant is very happy and delighted when she can help guests with their issues, turning their challenges into memorable experiences. These impact she created make her day and drive her career.?

What are the functions and duties of management you have faced under the Front Office Department?

The key priority of the Front Office department is to ensure that the operation runs smooth, the best possible in each day as anything could happen. Especially when Front Office is frontliners to manage guest experiences during their stay. It is the Front Office to see, to hear ?and to respond to every guests’ expectations as well as disappointments. While Front Office team may not be able to roam around the hotel facilities they have to understand all work processes, this will enable them to professionally handle any glitches that take place and efficiently coordinate with relevant team to fix them in timely manners. This is why being on the floor and in the front of the house is crucial.

Front Office department is a multi-taking team and the front line of the hotel where guest journeys start. The team has to ?coordinate with other departments, mainly Housekeeping, and Food and Beverage department, to ensure guest’s satisfaction are met.

What skill set does a Front Office Manager require to have while working in the Front Office Department??

One of the most important skills for the Front Office team is problem solving/decision making, allowing the person to foresee what will happen in the future in which we can prevent it before happening. As a Guest Service Agent, Concierge or Guest Relation Officer, it is important that the person can read and see what the guest is thinking and how the guest feel. For example, when listening to the guests, the team should know what is the concern the guest has, or how tension the situation is. Be able to read the guests’ minds and understand them, gave us 50% opportunity to successfully help the guests recover from their issues. From then another 40% is about how the action is taking, leaving 10% for human error that may arise, but again manageable.?

?In conclusion, to work in front office, everyone must be sharp, think ahead, and act fast.

Then being a Front Office Manager, same as other manager, leadership is required. How to lead and prepare the team to perform their routines seamlessly and manage guests’ dissatisfaction professionally. This is simply because timing is a limited resource while working in the Front Office, since guests most of the time expect their concerns to be solved instantly.?

As a manager Ms. Vipanant leads her team, knows each individual strengths, understands their weaknesses and plans on developing their required skills set.? Certain skills could be gain from training or books, however some has to come from working experiences.?

As a role model for the team, Front Office Manager needs to be calm and tactful under any pressures or situations.?

What are the critical characteristics for people working in the Front Office Department?

Critical characteristics require in the Front Office personnel are communication, active listening and pleasant interaction.

Listening to the guest without putting yourself in their shoes, will make it very difficult to understand them and could potentially escalating the guests’ emotion to anger.? It is as well about having good emotional quotient, which helps one manage own emotion and understand emotions of others, because front office personnel cannot break out in front of any guests.?

Ms. Vipanant always believes that the most important trait is a good attitude, then the skill and knowledge will follow. Since the person having good attitude and work passion will keen to learn new things, lead to open-minded and willing to take new challenges. Even a mistake or any human error, the good attitude person can learn from it, move on and never repeat the same mistakes.

What is a daily challenges the Front Office Operations usually face and how did you solve that situation?

?The challenge for the Front Office team is the comments from the guests.?

Ms. Vipanant always tell her team that comments are both positive and negative. That's why it is important how fast we can analyze the problems and act upon them. Again, It’s all about controlling yourself under the pressure. As a Front Office we always have a chance to calm the guests down, whenever you are calm, guest will slowly calm down as well. However, we have to understand the cause and its root as well, why or what causes guests’ dissatisfaction, how guest feel and from there you can offer the solution and slowly calm the guest down.

What is the technology used to enhance guest experience in the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok, Thailand?

The technology used to enhance guest experience at the Mandarin Oriental includes the iPad to communicate with the guests. Nowadays guests can visit the Mandarin Oriental Official website and download hotel information by the tip of their fingers. Furthermore, the Mandarin Oriental chat is available, the chat will assign ?the question to the responsible department to answer so that the correct information can be provided to the guest, the process is fast and efficient.?

Every new technology needs time to adjust, especially at the Mandarin Oriental hotel, where there is all generations work together. The generation X will take more time to adjust to this new technology and to work beyond their comfort zones. That is how the Mandarin Oriental welcomes diversity in their team of various generations, encouraging all to adapt to each other. However, everything takes time, but as a team, supporting each other is the key to success.?

Ms. Vipanant reiterated that even though the world are changing and work becoming easier using technology, she has ?fully respect of the old generation for their rich working experiences. As mentioned earlier, some skills can gain from experience only.?

What do you do to ensure effective interdepartmental communication between the Front Office Department and other departments?

Email is the most effective interdepartmental communication between the Front Office and other departments. The reason we use email because it is the clear information it could provide. However, for any urgent issues, the best mode of communication is call directly to the person and ensure the work is completed.? As a Front Office Manager it is important to ensure the work is done before moving on to other things.

Describe a team building technique that you use to help the team member engage during a stressful situation?

?The key to have strong team building in the Front Office Department is to have a two-way communication. As a Front Office Manager, being open minded to the team is very crucial, the team has to feel safe to come up and consult with their manager whenever they need.

?However you must have discipline as well, such as dealing with stressful situation. To deal with stressful situation at the work place is part of the work, but after work Ms. Vipanant always recommends her team to leave all their stress with their uniforms at work, never taken any stress or ill-feeling home to their family, friend or partner because it is not healthy at all. Tomorrow is always a new day to restart, what in the past is only for the learning. The most important is to learn from the mistakes, to be in the guests’ shoes and understand what so they want, and try to think ahead of what they want. Once you understand your guest, it is easier to handle the situation.? Leaning about individual personality is one of the tools that helps when dealing with stressful situations.?

Have you encountered any challenges in adapting to new workplaces?

Ms. Vipanant considers herself very lucky; she is an easy-going person and being in her age made her understand and able to work with any generation. However for Ms. Vipanant, to successfully work in this changing world and diversify team, being adaptive and collaborative is the key.

What do you think will be the trend in the hotel industry in the year of 2023?

In the year of 2023 more tourist will travel, for the past two months there have been Europeans, American, Korean, Chinese, and middle east tourists. Ms. Vipanant seee this year would be a good year for the leisure sector. People will travel when there is opportunity arises. And Bangkok, Thailand is always one of the best destinations for tourism. This is a chance for us to engage with the Europeans or other foreigners again after the covid 19 pandemic in the past three years have changed the hospitality industry drastically. It is also a very fulfilling year for Ms. Vipanant since a diverse group of tourists are coming into the country and she sees the opportunity to tap into new targeted markets. With potentially diverse group of customers, the team will continue to be open, adaptable and responsive to all.?

What is the key passion and strive you to work in the Mandarin Oriental Bangkok Hotel and the hospitality industry?

First of all, since I started working here at The Mandarin Oriental Bangkok ?in the past 5 years, I love the Mandarin Oriental hotel itself it’s an iconic structure and piece of history in Thai culture I am honored to be here giving the warm welcoming and providing the hospitality service for the guests. I mean the name of the hotel of course, it's a legend, people want to work here. When I started working here, I was kind of lucky, I have a good team surrounded by good environment . When you have good people around you, you feel like you come to see your family, you come to work, then the guests here are also very nice. Of course, they have expectations we have to perform our best and align to the service standard of the Mandarin Oriental , but sometimes that happens everywhere. I don't feel like I come to work, I don't have to force myself to come too early. I don't have to force myself to get up in the morning. I still feel like, oh, I want to go. I want to go early. Lastly the hotel history and architecture design structure are iconic to be in and see how much history the hotel got, a beautiful place every day, it already makes you happy.

I am honored to be able to interview Khun Vipanant Kusolmanomai, getting to understand her passion in the hospitality industry, the knowledge and skills from her experience as an Assistant Front Office Manager. Furthermore, to get the opportunity to write an article on one of the important departments of the Hospitality industry, getting to understand the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group historical story which is one of the Hospitality leading Luxury hotel worldwide and iconic elements of Thai culture.

Khun Vipanant interview is full with passionate answers and it really motivates me to grow and follow my passion in the hospitality industry and strive harder.