Career Advice Successful High flyers’ story

Travel passion leads to InterCon publicity role

Moses Lee Wai-yin, communications executive at the InterContinental Grand Stanford Hong Kong, loves travelling and exploring exotic cultures and delicacies, a passion which led him to pursue a career in tourism. He interned with the public relations team of the Macau Government Tourist Office Representative in Hong Kong to learn about marketing communications before joining the hotel. He talks to Wong Yat-hei

What’s your academic background?
I graduated from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2011.
 
How do you start your day?

I start my day with a breakfast from our staff cafeteria to ensure I have sufficient energy to support my daily work. We also have our internal morning briefings to update work status among our team members. In the morning, I keep a close eye on our media coverage and competitors’ performance from both printed and online media. After that, I will discuss with our chefs enquiries from the media and arrange interviews and photo-shooting schedule with reporters.
 
What does your job entail?
My department’s role is to secure maximum publicity for the hotel and its restaurants. We are responsible for promotional campaigns and I assist in the production of marketing collateral such as posters and flyers, as well as preparing press releases and handling media enquiries. I am also responsible for producing guest letters, voucher purchases and reports on the results of publicity and marketing.

What are the major challenges you’ve encountered so far?
I have to be very attentive to details in this role. As we are communicating with external parties on behalf of the hotel, accuracy for all marketing collateral is a prerequisite so we have to do meticulous proofreading. Another challenge is to handle different tasks smoothly. Workload is considerably heavy for the communications team in the hotel industry. I have to compile a very clear timetable in my mind and prioritise tasks according to their urgency and importance.   

What are your plans?
As I am new in the profession, I try my best to keep myself up to scratch and learn new things everyday. I would like to improve on my interpersonal and communications skills and develop my career in the field of marketing communications in the hotel and tourism industry, where I can demonstrate my creativity. After gaining a couple of years of work experience, I plan to take a master programme to further sharpen my competitive edge and knowledge in the marketing field.

Any advice for those who want to enter the industry?
A broad understanding of hotel operations is required as we work with various internal departments and act as facilitators to ensure effective communication with media. Language proficiency and interpersonal skills are also essential. Since promoting our restaurant business is a huge part of our job, being passionate about food is an advantage.