From the Mandarin Oriental with Love…
Amanda Hyndman, Mandarin Oriental Area Vice President of London, Munich and Prague discusses her luxury Edwardian hotel in Hyde Park
Mandarin Oriental is situated in the exclusive neighbourhood of Knightbridge, renowned for its wealthy visitors. With so much competition in the capital, what is it about the hotel that attracts these guests to you each year?
After our £100m renovation in 2019, we positioned our hotel as being ‘reimagined and reinvented’ and are capitalising on unique location between the glorious Royal Park and bustling Knightsbridge. By focusing on London as a world class destination we have identified new international customer segments while focusing more on bespoke staycation experiences. We will be introducing more personalised experiences through partnerships with the wealth of nearby exclusive retail and unique attractions.
Our 2* Michelin restaurant, Dinner by Heston Blumenthal offers an alfresco dining in the garden terrace during the summer months, or you may enjoy a culinary adventure of Heston’s historic British gastronomy in the comfort of your own suite. Our all-day dining restaurant, The Rosebery now offers an afternoon tea picnic hamper in the park or at home via ShopMO. Our residential spa packages now offers a newly curated wellness menu of signature therapies by our in-resident wellness practitioners together with bespoke treatments and journeys from our award-winning partners.
Most importantly, what truly differentiate us is our colleagues. We are committed to exceeding guest expectation by surprise and delight them at every opportunity, we want everyone to leave with everlasting memories in most aspect of their stays.
The hotel has a team of over 500 employees that create a genuine British atmosphere and service. In your role as General Manager, what is it you enjoy most and how do you lead the team each day to maintain the level of service?
Delighting our guests as well as our colleagues. I’ve had a privilege of working with amazing people and meeting wonderful guests from all around the world.
During time of uncertainly, communication is essential. It is significant to keep our colleagues motivated, engaged and reassured. We provide weekly/monthly activities of colleagues’ programmes including service recognition awards and hotel updates, virtual learning experiences, wellness classes, departmental trainings, leadership meetings and team building activities as a continuation of our charity campaign, FANtastic London, where we have delivered over 60,000 hours of community services since the launch in 2018. We also communicate via our internal platform called MyMO, where I provide weekly VDO updates since the lockdown in March 2020.
The crisis has brought out the best in many people globally, and it is uplifting to see communities rallying around each other. There are countless acts of kindness, generosity and self-sacrifice that after all of this we will never forget and be grateful for. Also having a passion is key to success, and I also believe in G.R.I.T. – guts, resilience, initiative and tenacity.
What bespoke services do you offer, to go the extra mile for your guests?
We actively communicate with our guests from pre-arrival to post-stay, every need is anticipated as we continue to delight and exceed expectations in all aspects. Today’s guests are first and foremost digital customers, they reply on various digital channels to navigate and communicate with brands through exceptional, informative and personalised experiences. We have introduced a new communication platform called HelloMO, where our guests can select their preferred messaging channels to interact with us including SMS and Whatsapp. HelloMO operates 24/7 and guarantees a response in 2 minutes to all requests. We have also recently launched our new experiences page on MO.com featuring unique London tours and private access as well as exclusive Fan of MO experiences, all can be booked directly with our Concierge.
Mandarin Oriental is such a prestigious, exclusive venue and a perfect place for a proposal. Can you tell us about a proposal that really stands out to you?
We have countless of memorable proposals in the garden, or in the Loggia overlooking Hyde Park as we are the only hotel in London with unique outdoor space that offers panoramic park views with a private Royal Entrance from Hyde Park. Once of the most recent ones we had was a surprised proposal in the garden where the groom exclusively commissioned the Band of Household Cavalry to play their favourite songs.
As this is our love issue, can you share stories of some amazing weddings that have taken place at the hotel?
Every day is a special occasion here at Mandarin Oriental. Every individual is unique and we continue to offer the same attention to detail for all intimate or grand affairs. A bespoke menu specially for your occasion can be arranged, our dedicated events and banqueting team promise our exemplary service from the beginning until the end.
With hospitality now back and busier than ever, what is Mandarin Oriental looking forward to for the remainder of the year?
I am very cautiously optimistic that there will be a gradual strengthening of traveller confidence to enable us to rebuild the business, towards the fourth quarter and into 2022 and hopefully we can look towards brighter times ahead.
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