Corporate Bits | Sands China and MGTO launch celebrity mentor programme for retail professionals

Sands China Ltd. and the Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO) launched the Celebrity Mentor Programme last week for the retail employees at Sands Shoppes, the company’s four interconnected malls with more than 850 retailers.

Co-organized by MGTO and Sands China, the new training program invites celebrity mentors to conduct customer service workshops for retail professionals. The workshop series gives retail employees a chance to learn from experts in their respective fields, better equipping them to provide the best shopping experience for visitors to Sands China’s properties, which attracted 92 million visits in 2017.

Beginning in 2013, the Celebrity Mentor Programme offers complimentary customer service training to the retail professionals at Sands Shoppes, which is made up of Shoppes at Four Seasons, Shoppes at Venetian, Shoppes at Cotai Central and Shoppes at Parisian.

“The Sands Retail Academy and MGTO share a common objective of supporting the development of Macao’s retail professionals, and we have co-operated to create this Celebrity Mentor workshop series in a joint effort to help achieve that objective,” said Grant Chum, chief of staff for Sands China Ltd. “The retail sector is key to the success of Macau’s tourism industry, and retail employees play an important role in providing quality service to visitors as Macau continues its development as a world center of tourism and leisure.”

Four workshops have been planned for Celebrity Mentor, with topics that include brand development, communication skills, sales techniques and consumer behavior. The first workshop in the series was conducted by Hong Kong actress and UK-accredited trainer Astrid Chan on Thursday at The Venetian Macao’s Adelson Advanced Education Centre, following the program’s opening ceremony. Chan has been actively involved in corporate and impression management training since 2013 and conducted her session on the topic of personal branding.