Grant Young
In this interview, Grant Young, General Manager of The Westin Desaru Coast, share some exciting projects and stories from behind the scenes.
What do you do?
I’ve been fortunate to be the General Manager of The Westin Desaru Coast Resort and Desaru Coast Conference Centre for the past 12 months. Prior to Johor, I’ve had stints in KL, Sarawak, Bali, London and several locations in my native Australia.
How did you get into the industry?
I was one of the few that always knew this was what I wanted to do. I had aspirations of being a hotel manager from the time I was in high school, but it wasn’t until a fateful work experience as a barman in a hotel that I knew for sure this is where I wanted to spend my career. I was immediately drawn to the energy of the business, the people and the fact that every day was so different. I got a Corporate Management Traineeship with a large international hotel group when I graduated from university and never looked back.
Share with us a story from behind the scenes.
Behind the scenes can be a perfect symphony of chaos at times. What the guest sees in the front of house, compared to what it takes to execute it in the back of house, is part of what I love about working in hotels. Sometimes the simplest of things – like say a birthday cake and some balloons in a room take the involvement of so many sets of hands to ensure it is ‘right’. You need the person who receives the request to understand how important it is for that guest, take extreme care in updating the reservation, and communicating the celebration – setting booking traces, updating VIP lists etc. Then on the day, it takes careful communication between housekeeping, the front desk, the duty manager and room service to ensure everything is very well choreographed. If one person in that chain doesn’t take ownership, you can go from delighting a customer with a nice moment to ruining their stay experience as we have not met their expectations. We deal with this kind of symphony in scores every single day.
What’s a food memory from your childhood or travels that stands out?
I believe food alone doesn’t give you memories. It’s the people and experiences that partner with it that make it memorable. Despite all the incredible food and beverage I have tried throughout the years, what I will always remember is from my childhood. As a family, we used to go to New Zealand once a year in the winter. We would hire a campervan and explore different parts of that beautiful country. We would mostly cook together as a family, even though the food was simple… eating together, in the van on those cold winter days with spectacular scenery all around us is something I will always remember.
What’s the best/ worst part of your job?
The best part of my job is the people. I have been so fortunate to work in many different cultures and meet people from all walks of life. From British and Malaysian Royalty to kampung folks in the remote rivers of Sarawak. I don’t know of many other careers that could have given me that.
The most difficult part is always the long hours – working on holidays, coming home later than expected – it’s difficult, especially with a young family. I am fortunate to have a very supportive family who understands this is a part of the job and comes with the territory of being a hotelier.
What’s your favourite food and beverage pairing?
I think travelling has made me less inclined to pigeonhole to just one pairing. But since you are twisting my arm, I will say nothing beats an ice-cold beer with a great burger on a sunny day. For a local favourite, I love Sarawak Laksa with ‘Kopi Peng.’
What’s one of the craziest things you’ve seen behind the scenes?
I once ran a wedding in another property where the guests were seated, bride and groom were standing by, and the celebrant was a no show! Despite numerous calls, we could not get through to him. Disaster! We arranged champagne for the guests and kept the bride and groom (who were in separate waiting rooms) entertained with drinks. We managed to find another celebrant who happened to be close by and came to our rescue. The best part was, the bride and groom were none the wiser… we only told them after the event!
The perfect day off would be…
I love our family Sundays in JB – I’ll usually cook breakfast for the family, my wife and I will enjoy a coffee from our favourite café. We will spend the day relaxing at home and around the pool. Then finish it off with a nice dinner, usually somewhere the kids can run around with other neighbourhood kids, and my wife and I can enjoy a Pizza and a G&T… or 2!
A day in the life of a General Manager Grant Young is…
Never dull! I usually start early – around 7-730ish, and finish around 8 pm. I start by reviewing the reports of the day and try to spend much of my first few hours at breakfast – meeting guests and ensuring the buffet is presented well. I’ll take countless meetings throughout the day with all the different stakeholders I am accountable to – my guests, my team, and our owners. I spend a lot of time following up, ensuring projects are on track and that we are moving in the right direction towards our strategic priorities. I will meet with different members of my team each day – to check in with them, and understand their challenges and how I can support them. I’ll walk the property a couple of times a day generally. I will always spend 10-15 minutes at the end of every day preparing for the next 1-2 days, so I know what’s coming up.
What does Grant Young do for fun?
I like to run – to distress and to stay fit. I have a passion for diving. However, I don’t get the chance to do it as often as I would like! Other than that, it’s travel – with my family. We are very excited that things are opening up and travel has become a possibility once again.
What’s something you’d like guests to know about The Westin Desaru Coast Resort?
At The Westin, we have a Run Concierge – an in-house guide to local running routes. Take an early morning jog with our Run Concierge and take in the spectacular sunrise of Johor’s east coast. Our ‘run with a view’ includes a run around the spectacular Els Club Golf Course of Desaru.
We are also an amazing destination for cyclists, long rolling cycling routes from the novice weekend road warrior to the budding professional. There are distances and routes for every fitness level.
How has the pandemic changed you, your perspective, or the way you operate?
The pandemic has hit hotels and the hospitality industry harder than most other sectors. It has taught us as hoteliers to learn to do much more with much less. It’s also taught me to be nimble, think differently when hunting for new opportunities, take a risk and go for it. And last but not least, whilst we have always needed to be empathetic, the pandemic has taught me just how important it is to be patient with others, and learn to understand them – their challenges, their fears and concerns.
What’s something you’d like people to know about being a General Manager as a profession?
People first. In everything you do. In Marriott, we have a saying, take care of your people, they will take care of the guests, and the guests will come back. A simple philosophy that started in 1927 when Mr Marriott Snr started a humble root beer stand and is still lived and breathed in every one of our almost 8000 hotels globally.
Apart from taking great care of people, as a GM, you need to be flexible and ask lots of questions. And you need to be calm under pressure because there is plenty of it, in different forms, every single day.
Grant Young’s view on the hospitality scene in Johor?
I love the variety of cuisines available here. There is a burgeoning produce scene developing here as well. I’m particularly fond of the café scene in JB. Great ‘hipster cafes’ as the locals would say, serving first-class coffee from local roasters, such as Vamos and MyLyberica – and menus that are often fun with a strong focus on western cuisine with local flavours.
What practices do you currently implement or hope to implement in the future to work towards social responsibility and sustainability?
This is a topic near and dear to my heart! Thus far, we have implemented rainwater harvesting in the property, so our gardens are always watered with rainwater. They also form the water source for the ponds around the beachside of the resort. We have our own water bottling facility on site. Reusable glass bottles in each of the guest rooms save us around 200,000 plastic bottles going to landfill each year. The next big items we are addressing are food waste and residential bath amenities.
Food waste is a huge issue globally. We are partnering with WWF to help us reduce the amount of wasted food from the production side of our operations. We’ve also just partnered with FOLO farm here in Johor, which will take our post-consumer food waste. They will compost it and use it on their 100% organic and sustainable permaculture farm. Lastly, we are actively searching for a partner that can take post-production but pre-consumer food – to be packed and delivered to folks in need throughout Johor.
Residential bath amenities are something that is long overdue. We will be eliminating single-use bath gels and shampoos by June of this year.
Our on-property sustainability committee is reviewing several other large scale projects, including recycling more, using fewer single-use items and improving how our produce is packaged and sent to the hotel from our partners and suppliers to try and reduce packing waste. We are also working on an accounting project to digitize much of our paper audit requirements. A huge undertaking, but a worthy one to help reduce our paper consumption.
There are so many other opportunities we have to do better – to serve our community, and serve our world.
What’s in store for you in the upcoming months?
Our biggest upcoming project is a full-scale renovation of our beach bar – a very exciting new concept, something not yet seen in Malaysia. We can’t wait to unveil it to the world, likely by year’s end. Without giving too much away on the F&B, our philosophy will be to aim for Zero Waste, with a strong sustainability focus on our produce sourcing. Watch this space!
Apart from that, we have an exciting new a la carte menu launching in April for Seasonal Tastes which will bring a ‘go local’ focus to our menu programming, along with highlights from Westin’s “Eat Well” philosophy. We also look forward to unveiling our new Italian Chef to helm Prego restaurant a little later on in the year.
In addition, we have an exciting new activities program in the works with a focus on health, fitness and the outdoors. This will be programmed by our new Spa and Wellness manager joining us from Bali in the month of April.
Read more interviews such as this one with Grant Young here, and stay up to date with the latest food and beverage happenings in KL here.
Lucky guy! So he has been in Sarawak before, a really unique experience, I’m sure.