Working from home

Mandarin OrientalKuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur City Centre,50088 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Tel: 00 603 380 8888, Fax: 00 603 380 8833

Web site: www.mandarin-oriental.com

The 13th property in the international chain

Accommodation: 643 rooms, 22 meeting rooms and a health spa

Average room rate, year to date: £40

Occupancy, year to date: 75%

IHAve been with Mandarin Oriental for four years, previously as regional director of sales for the UK and Scandinavia in London. It was in November last year that I came to Malaysia to become director of sales and marketing at the Kuala Lumpur hotel. It was an internal promotion for me, which was great, particularly as it was my first opportunity to work abroad.

When I got here, the hotel had already soft-opened the first 50 rooms. Then, over the next few months, we gradually opened more rooms and facilities and had our official launch in March. This is now Mandarin Oriental's largest property worldwide, with 643 rooms.

It's my job to establish the hotel's reputation as the premier property in Malaysia, as well as meeting our shareholders' profitability expectations. But I have an enormous challenge on my hands as Kuala Lumpur has an oversupplied hotel market - there are 15 de luxe properties here - and thanks to the Far East's economic crash, the trading environment is difficult.

It's part of my contract to live in the hotel, so I get up at 6am and go to the gym to have a good workout. This is vital as I have to do lots of client entertaining and need to burn off some of the calories. Then it's back to my room for a slice of toast and to get togged up ina suit.

I'm at my desk by 7.30am and the first thing I do is to check my personal e-mails. This is a great way of keeping in touch with friends and is more immediate than the post. After that, I read my work e-mails from our regional sales offices in Europe, the USA and Australia and write responses to them. It's important to read any e-mails that have arrived overnight first thing because I'll get another 50-70 during the day.

At 8.30am, I and the other heads of department have a meeting to review the previous night's occupancy and revenue and to benchmark ourselves against our competitors. We also look at forecasts for the next three months, analysing how many rooms we've sold and what we need to do.

Then it's back to my office to squeeze in half an hour's paperwork - signing purchase requests, dealing with correspondence from clients, internal memos and so on - before my next meeting at 9.30am. This is the daily operations meeting, chaired by the general manager, where we review the coming day's arrivals. For example, do we have any VIPs arriving, any frequent customers, any journalists, any groups? We discuss who should welcome the guests and what special treatment they require.

At 10.30am I meet the public relations executive, who reports to me, and we'll go through press releases that need sending out, sponsorship activities that we can get involved with and other ideas for how to promote the property. I especially enjoy this part of my job because it's something I'd never done before coming here.

After this, for the next few hours I get stuck into my own projects. Since I've been here, these have varied from organising the filming of a TV advertisement, making a sales video about the hotel and doing a direct mail campaign in partnership with American Express. I'm also developing contingencies for sales and marketing in case we're hit by the millennium bug - the hotel is year 2000 compliant, but we still have to develop strategies just in case.

Sometimes I'll entertain corporate clients over lunch, but otherwise I'll just have a sandwich at my desk and carry on working. The afternoon is broken up by meetings with corporate clients and advising my staff. I manage 44 people in this job - a big jump for me as I only had one person reporting to me in London - and I need to make time for them.

By 6pm, the office is quiet so I can concentrate on any paperwork that needs doing and catch up with my e-mails again. I'm usually in my office until 9.30pm, when I head for my room, order a snack from room service and crash into bed. nded opening