The MV of Malaysian Boy by Astro for the Suara Kami Concert recently had scenes shot at The Kuala Lumpur Train Station (now the Kuala Lumpur Komuter Station) and it brought back fond memories for me. This was what I had envisioned it to be; the idea was to turn The Building into one big Local Community Hotel. After all, historically, there was a hostel in it’s premises when it first opened [Note : Historically NOT a Luxury Hotel ok?]. Wait. Is there really such a thing as a Community Hotel? Surprisingly, the first lesson you learn in the Hotel business is; we make our money from rooms, we make our reputation from food & beverage. By saying food & beverage, they mean by being close to the local community. Ok, I dread the idea of doing a couple of charitable events on special holidays and call it “being close to the local community” or Corporate Social Governance. Furthermore, this is a Historical Building [Bangunan Warisan Negara] which many locals have forgotten, should we not revive and restore this old grand dame? Problem is, I am of the opinion that Malaysians are quite stereotyped when it comes to our Historical Buildings … come on, many Historical Buildings in other parts of the world have become popular local as well as foreign tourist attractions … so why cant the Kuala Lumpur Train Station?

With the work cut out for me, I decided to mash history, architecture, google, forums, facebook, photographers, studios, couples and a whole load of hodge podge into opening the doors of The Heritage Station Hotel for photography and community events. After all, the building was supposed to be jinxed anyway … [read more here]. So what did I have to lose? Carcosa Sri Negara was then charging RM2,000.00 for a Pre Wedding shoot, and if there were VIP’s there, you will be diplomatically pushed to other areas. I thought if you paid money in a Hotel, you were supposed to be treated like a VIP? So what the hell, I gave it away for FREE [as I was reading books on FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, FREAKANOMICS, etc]. Did we succeed? Honestly, The Hotel not only did better in terms of revenue, but we were making loads of new friends through our community events and all [we were the official venue for Photo Malaysia Forum as well!]. This was, to me, a Community Based Hotel Model, where the local community actually get involved together with the Hotel Operators in achieving the goal. Mine at that time was to inculcate history as well as making the building more visible to locals and foreign tourists alike.

So there you have it. It is actually possible to turn a Historical Buidling into something more useful and beneficial to the local community without leaving your foreign tourists out of the picture. Yes, I was constrained by finances back then, but can you imagine with the proper backing and financial support, what could be achieved? In fact, for me the ultimate vision for The Kuala Lumpur Train Station (now the Kuala Lumpur Komuter Station) would be to change it into a LIVING MUSEUM with a THEMATIC HOTEL [not luxury] combined with a tribute to the works of Arthur Benison Hubback, the architect responsible for buildings in the vicinity, as part of the museum; whilst opening it’s doors to the local community and foreign tourists alike for photo shooting opportunities. Now wouldn’t that be cool? After all, can you name me any existing Living Museums here in Malaysia as of today? It does not have to expensive nor exorbitant or even to a specific strata of people, it could be viable economically if it was opened to all [not like your Luxury Hotels] …… I leave you with KOMSO’s newspaper clipping, when we tried to educate the local community on the need to preserve our Buildings of National Heritage for the benefit of us Malaysians and all ….

Kunjungan Dimensi Silam - A Community Project

Jayavarman VII's Smile : Mysterious yet beckoning.

Checking out of the Airport, I was filled with a myriad of emotions, excitement, anxiety and fear all at the same time. It was kind of like a dream …. I was physically in the historical yet mystical Land of Angkor Wat, Cambodia! Looking out of the taxi, reality slammed into my face, for the entire journey to town, the roads were lined right to left, with Hotels, Hotels and nothing but Hotels! Somehow, the realization of my foolish impudence began to surface. However, if not for Cambodia, The Lab Ratz may never have been born. The extreme competition of Hotels coupled with the incredulous market forces forced me to be creative and resourceful, something I normally have a knack for, but had to up my game a couple of notches up. It was Cambodia who taught me about survivability in it’s dense, unforgiving Hotel Jungle. Part of my survival gear was online marketing; so I took a deep breath, jumped off the deep end, sinking into the the abyss of the world wide web …..

A Small 60 Room, 3 Star Hotel in Siem Reap Town

As thing settled down in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I had a little more time and was soon marathon watching my favorite documentaries [I am a sucker for documentaries] on History Channel [Malaysia did not have this channel then], National Geographic, Discovery, etc., in my tiny comfy room. After watching an episode on how Laboratory Mice actually helped Humans in various forms, I could not help but to compare the significance of this to life itself. Hence, The Lab Ratz was born. The tagline of of Life is an Experiment! draws parallel to the very laboratory mice that I had just watched, as, in my opinion, we are all part of the rat race, looking for answers and at times, taking that precarious leap of faith whilst foraging for food! I thought about it and yelled in delight! Yes, it’s a little raw, but in recent months, I have in fact found a very elegant clip that explains, in great depth, that very essence I was dreaming about … Ladies & Gentlemen, I present to you …. IF – Live Curious by The National Geographic Channel.

When Taylor’s was awarded its full-fledged University status, Le Petit Hotelier took on a different path. The School believed that in ringing endorsement of the University status, the newsletter must be redesigned into a magazine-like publication that offers more insightful reads, which included thought-provoking pieces and research discoveries.

It was a challenge. A real big challenge.

But I took it on. It wasn’t easy to convert what seemed like a campus-newsletter that featured close to 90% of School, student and campus events to something a little more intellectual; something that would interest front office managers, human resource directors, master chefs and the rest of the professionals from the hospitality, tourism and culinary arts industry.

Le Petite Hotelier 2007

Turning the limelight onto academicians was not an easy task, but the end result was brilliant. The entire process uncovered hidden talents among lecturers and faculty staff, and an outlet to re-connect with industry partners and alumni for that matter. And of course, it was a really tedious task.

The role of an editor is never easy to fill. I wrote, edited, proof-read and managed the entire publication all through conceptualising its theme to seeing it through its design process and eventually having it published, printed and distributed.

The pride I felt when I first held the published copy in hand was the perhaps the proudest I have ever been for something that I have worked so hard on. Presently, the next issue is in progress. If you’re from the industry, or is simply just an individual who fancies the field of hospitality, tourism and culinary arts as much as I do. Go ahead, give Volume 2 from 2010 a read. I promise it’ll be good!

Project : Ruemz - a page from works in progress brochure

Ruemz – the project, initially, was quite a challenge as the School was working on a model where students from the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts would actually run this hotel as part of their learning experience. On the other hand, the building structure for this hotel was originally built as a hostel which equated to a mismatch of sorts but I was tasked to sort matters out. After much thinking, I embarked on a smart partnership program with Panasonic Malaysia, Karcher Malaysia, Sweet Dream, NTPM (Nibong Tebal Paper Mill), Chempro, SelecTV and with the assistance of my other colleague Mr. Numa Marcel Bertrand; BOH Tea and Illy Coffee. In essence, we had assembled quite an impressive team as Ruemz will be the First Concept Hotel in Malaysia focusing on Research & Development.

People in and outside the community doubted that the model could work with students, however with the rise of the Generation Y, I felt that with proper space, guidance and the appropriate organizational culture, this would encourgae students to showcase their potential and capability. Incidentally, during my youth, opportunities like this were rare, thus I took every opportunity to create room where students could play, unafraid, and experiment all day long. The whole idea was to maintain an extremely positive and forward thinking working environment. We based much of our philosophies on being Young, Original and Unpretentious as follows;

Project : Ruemz - 'Vision' taken from a works in progress brochure

Project : Ruemz - 'Management Philosophy' taken from a works in progress brochure

We launched Ruemz successfully on 12 February 2011 running the Student model. To everyone’s surprise our guests praised the level of service and the capabilities of the younger generation, who were able to tackle much of the operations aspect on their own. I was elated but this signaled the end of the project, and it was time to move on to another new challenging project, despite me wanting to carry on …. the adventure continues.

The Hubback Brothers

While doing online research, I found that the information on our Buildings of National Heritage (Bangunan Warisan Malaysia) in Malaysia was  far and between. Somehow, names kept getting misspelled and it seems that not many could agree on the same thing.  Strangely I came across the daughter of A.B. Hubback, the man responsible for much of our historical buildings in Malaysia. Without further ado, I packed my bags, armed only with a meager budget and hopped on a plane bound for the United Kingdom. By the way, if you consider the exchange rate of 5.75 on the Malaysian Ringgit to Pound Sterling, it certainly wasn’t meager for me!

What I returned with, was the realization that not only did her father, A. B. Hubback contributed to our nation, but his brother T. R. Hubback also lobbied and founded our first Forest National Reserve, better known as Taman Negara today. And yet again, why is there not much information on these brothers right at home in Malaysia? I am curious. Undaunted, I had opened the doors of the Hotel which was situated within the Kuala Lumpur Train Station in an effort to try and garner some awareness about the building and for people to partake in Malaysia’s history. The effort resulted in our blog at the domain prewedding.info with some success. Surprisingly, we were also a finalist under The Most Popular Hotel in Asia Award 2009 by HotelClub. Incredulous!

Self Designed Advert : The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur

For more information on The Hubback Brothers Tribute, please visit the online site @ http://www.thehubbacks.org or join our discoveries on Facebook as well! The sites are maintained and updated by The Lab Ratz [bigratz] on blogger for the simple reason that if something should happen, this blog should be there to be shared by all!

Pretty In White's 2008 Website

At that very time, there were many wedding photographers out in the Malaysian Market’s which started using WordPress as a medium to sell their products and services, which I thought was very interesting. These photographers actually took the trouble to customize their self hosted WordPress blogs in looking unique and appealing. The thought of using this very engine for Pretty In White was a rather daring and bold idea, as this was a blog engine, and not a professional website template! However, there were definitely many positive points in using a blog engine, namely the ease to update information in keeping your customers up to date. Moreover, the market for WordPress templates were beginning to grow as freelance designers begin to experiment, there was definitely a glimmer of hope for me!

So I sat down with the team at Pretty In White to break the misconception of having a blog engine as website, coincidentally, I got this idea from their photography partners. I was worried as this would be my first official experiment on WordPress and we are talking about an Established Designer Wedding Gown Boutique of repute here! Thank goodness the owners of Pretty In White were extremely understanding and willing to try something a little off the beaten path at that time.  The result was as follows;

Pretty In White's Website Revamp - 2008

For their new website, we had opted for a template that was clean and simple, with the emphasis on ease of navigation. This happened to be found in the template called Atlantica by Brandon R. Jones. Pretty In White’s new website focused on a moving feature slide show as a header, a featured article widget, flipping book and plenty of pictures that could be easily uploaded and maintained by themselves. Much customization had went into this template, from logos to menu drop downs, and to fool the general visitor, I even added the touch of a .html extension at the end of every url address!

Room Sampling At The Heritage Station Hotel

I do believe many of my colleagues in the Hotel Industry would have backed down from such a project. But my time at The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur was magical. You had extremely limited resources whilst keeping afloat and growing the business. Pressure, pressure, pressure! When I took over the reins officially, 2 main areas were apparent;

• Most Malaysians in general do not even know the location of the building, let alone the Hotel inside it, even though it is a gazetted National Heritage Building [Bangunan Warisan Negara]. Only commuters using KTMB Train Services were aware of the building, but not necessarily aware of the Hotel.
• They were marketing themselves as a 6 Star Budget Hotel, with limited internet support and access. This was something I could not fathom as the product could not equate to the marketing tagline.

The first 3 months was, as expected, tough but the team at The Heritage Station Hotel Kuala Lumpur were very supportive, and together we revamped the direction of the Hotel, returning to the basic fundamentals. I had grand visions for this Hotel, starting with small baby steps to begin with a No Frill, Budget Hotel —> Community Based Hotel —> Living Museum. The owner/lessee was pleasantly surprised at the outcome and made a pledge to us, if we could garner sufficient funds, he would plow back the funds into the Hotel, and how many Hotel owners do you know that is dedicated to this after a couple of bumps? The Heritage Station Hotel was the perfect place for me and the team to experiment with new ideas and concepts at that time. I decided to try things in reverse as opposed to the norm in the Malaysian Hotel Industry, by opening The Heritage Station Hotel’s doors to Pre Wedding and Wedding Photography for FREE. Hotels normally view this as taboo, cause it doesn’t generate sustainable income, is deemed to be an invasion of their guests privacy, creates noise pollution and is a security threat to the hotel itself. That being said, I went on the angle that Malaysians never seemed interested in History, so I took this as doing our bit in promoting Malaysian History and our Buildings of National Heritage (Bangunan Warisan Malaysia). The end result was very encouraging as we seemed to garner a lot of interest in the property which subsequently brought a lot of inquiries on room stays as well as conference/cocktail business for the Hotel! And who said FREE marketing does not work? Malaysian Hotel Management in general needs to rethink their strategies and read updated books like the Google Story.

Couples & Photographers @ The Heritage Station Hotel

Couples & Photographers @ The Heritage Station Hotel

The feeling of meeting new people everyday for just photo shoot, enlivened the Hotel’s atmosphere but it did not stop there, as I had organised many community events with partners, the pleasure of setting up http://www.prewedding.info (now at the domain http://heritagehotelmalaysia.blogspot.com) and more importantly, to do in-depth research on the Building itself, which led to the founding of The Hubback Brothers Tribute. How often do you get to fulfill so much in such a short time? Remember, I said earlier that my time in The Heritage Station Hotel was magical. To top it all off, I was extremely surprised to find, over the next few months, that the Heritage Station Hotel, Kuala Lumpur was the only budget hotel to be nominated as a finalist for the Most Popular Hotel Award 2009 – Asia Pacific by Hotel Club!

Finalist - Most Popular Hotel in Asia 2009