Macau Matters: Hotel guest simulation

Richard Whitfield

I participated in a “guest simulation” at the new Marriott hotel in the Galaxy Macau in Cotai on Wednesday-Thursday (20-21 May). It was a very interesting and instructive experience.
I had not really thought about it previously, but clearly, you need to know that everything is working well before a new hotel opens its doors to accept paying guests. And the only real way to carry out this test is to invite a lot of people to stay and try everything out. These simulated guests do not pay to stay, and reciprocate by carrying out a set of tasks to test the hotel’s systems.
We were asked to arrive before 10am and were given an information kit and a short briefing of what we were expected to do during our stay. We were asked to do specific things in different parts of the hotel and be at specific restaurants and other places at specific times. We were also asked to complete several questionnaires about our experiences. We were also given fake money (and credit cards) to pay for things and to gamble with.
One particularly interesting activity was the “stress test” where we were asked to turn on all the water, electric appliances and to turn up the air-conditioning and try out all the power sockets, etc in all the hotels rooms at 8am to see if the hotel could handle the load. It seemed to pass with flying colors.
Understandably, many of the hotel staff had limited English, but they were uniformly friendly and pleasant so that this problem did not become annoying. Also understandably, few staff knew much about Macau outside of the resort. This seems to be a general problem – most of my Macau born students also have little knowledge of Macau’s very interesting history, and its important place in the world.
The hotel was clearly having teething problems, but seemed to be handling the load well, and I did not see or hear about any “show-­stopper” problems. Overall, the facilities looked good. The rooms and other facilities were good, but the finishes in places were a bit rough. There also seemed to be a distinct lack of signage, but this is a relatively easily resolved problem. Overall the simulation exercise also seemed to be well thought out and managed, but the amount of information was confusing so that a more extended briefing at the beginning could have been worthwhile.
The whole exercise made me realize how complex hotel operations are, and how many things there are that can go wrong in so many ways – there is a huge amount of training and testing to be done before a hotel can open. Clearly several million patacas were spent on the exercise where hundreds of people stayed in the hotel and were fed in its restaurants and gambled in its casino over several days to complete the testing.
I talked to one senior staff member who has been involved in five hotel openings in Macau, and he noted how challenging they were. Most people trained in hospitality in the region can expect to be involved in many openings during their careers and I actually think it could be very interesting and fruitful work. Unfortunately, and stupidly, given the large numbers of hotels to be developed in Asia in the coming 20+ years, it is not part of the curriculum of most hotel management degrees. I have actually agreed to teach a course in project management for new hotel openings at the Macau University of Science and Technology, and there are very few places where this is taught as a degree course anywhere.
Overall, I enjoyed my stay and enjoyed participating in the testing, and I would be happy to join a similar exercise in the future. Anybody know where I can sign up?