This International Women’s Day (Mar 8), SG Magazine speaks to Cinn Tan, Pan Pacific Hotels Group’s chief commercial and marketing officer, and find out what it’s like to be a female leader in the hospitality industry, and why she takes a long-term view to success.
Growing up, Cinn Tan remembers being impressed by the places she stayed in whenever her businessman father brought the family along on his work trips. She recalls,“The hotels were comfortable and pretty; there was good food and friendly people. So I concluded that working in a hotel is a good job!”
That was how Tan, now the chief commercial and marketing officer for Pan Pacific Hotels Group, embarked on a career spanning over 25 years in hospitality operations. She was previously the senior vice-president of sales and marketing for Jin Jang International Hotels, the largest hotel group in China, and oversaw sales, revenue, distribution and partnership marketing for The Ascott Limited.
Tan has encountered her fair share of stereotypes, from her family’s disapproval of late working hours at the hotel during the early years of her career to workplace doubts about her ability to juggle family and work commitments. Today, she finds that females have more opportunities to assume upper management roles in hospitality. She points out, “In Pan Pacific Hotels Group, our operations, finance and technical services are led by females.”
On the other hand, challenges still prevail. Crediting her supportive husband, who has moved with her on several overseas job postings, as the reason she can progress in her career, Tan shares, “It is not easy to be a female in this industry, you need a lot of support and understanding from your family, spouse and children.”
Tan, who drives the marketing and commercial strategy of the Group’s over 50 properties in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America, is passionate about building a company culture that embraces change and growth, treasures trust and integrity, and takes a long-term view to success. She believes that leaders must model the culture they want to see in their companies and be committed to the success of their employees.
“The soft touch and personalised service have become very important for our customers,” she says. “For us to provide memorable experiences to our guests at every touch point, we need to do the same for our staff. As leaders, we need to reflect if our company culture has been encouraging, positive and inspiring.”
To this end, there is no difference between male and female leaders, says Tan, who believes that the qualities of compassion and empathy and the weakness of being overly task- and results-oriented are present in both genders. Cultural upbringing also contributes to the complexity of viewpoints at work. “But if we truly believe that trust and partnership are core values, we will come to a compromise. It becomes ‘we’ instead of ‘me’,” she emphasises.
Last month, Pan Pacific received the Global Sustainable Tourism Council certification for all eight Singapore properties, the largest certification of room stock and properties by a hotel group in Singapore. Tan is proud of the achievement yet cognizant of the massive effort it takes to get an entire company behind a sustainability-focused vision.
She explains, “To maintain and run a sustainable hotel is much costlier than running a normal hotel. Besides investing in the infrastructure and technology, educating the staff and communicating the vision and the benefit statement is vital. They must know why a process or decision is important not only for them as employees but also for the company they work for.”
As the emphasis on digital and social marketing increases, Tan is also kept on her toes on the latest distribution and marketing strategies. She laughs as she says, “It is fun and fulfilling but also very challenging. I’ve to make the extra effort to learn every day, even from my younger team members.”
She lauds the property teams’ enthusiasm to try new things while acknowledging her responsibility to provide training and clear guidelines on how to position a hotel’s products on different channels in the most effective way. “As a leader, we must set our teams up for success. We want them to deliver the KPIs [key performance indicators] and results, but we also need to provide the resources to help them do well,” she says.
For those considering a career in hospitality, Tan emphasises passion for the industry as a vital trait. “You need to enjoy meeting people and be ready for hardship. Every job has its difficult moments. Don’t quit when you don’t see results in the short-term; take a long-term vision in your decision making.”
Text by Grace Ma.
