General Manager
After a lifetime in hotels, retirement beckons for Sheraton Grande’s Richard Chapman – but he’s not saying when! Bangkok’s longest serving GM looks back on a career shaped by family tradition By Colin Hastings
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n an industry renowned for chopping and changing its senior managers with bewildering regularity, the reign of Richard Chapman as General Manager of the Sheraton Grande Sukhumvit for the past 20 years is really quite amazing. By a fairly wide margin, he’s now the longest serving GM in any of Bangkok’s five-star hotels. Long gone are the days when Bangkok hoteliers were awarded favorable long-term contracts that helped some of them to attain celebrity status on the local social scene. Legendary GM Kurt Wachtveitl, who spent 40 years at the Oriental, naturally comes to mind, but he wasn’t alone; many of his peers also became household names. By comparison, sadly, the majority of today’s GMs are reclusive bureaucrats who are rarely seen greeting guests in their hotel’s public areas. It’s a phenomenon that’s not lost on Richard. “The role of a general manager has changed so much in recent years. It’s more business focused than in the past, and less about the hospitality side of management,” he says. “Most hotels are owned by big corporations, so they’re only interested in the bottom line, which is perfectly understandable.” In his case, however, old habits die hard, for you don’t get far in the Sheraton Grande without bumping into him. His understated style relies on “management by walkabout” and he dislikes spending too much time behind a desk. Instead, he prefers to talk with colleagues, and to meet guests in person to find out what can be done to enhance their stay experience. Richard has also witnessed the loosening of ties that once bound the city’s five-star GMs together. In the past, members of this elite group would meet regularly over dinner to discuss business, which invariably but probably quite innocently led to an exchange of inside stories about each other’s hotel. “That rarely happens nowadays,” adds Richard. “Meetings of general managers tend to be discouraged because of anti-trust regulations.” But these changing times probably won’t bother him for much longer. At 74, retirement is surely imminent, though he’s not telling when.
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