IN 2017, at just under three years of operations, Marco Polo Ortigas Manila became the first hotel in the Philippines, along with another brand, to win the highest honor from the gold standard of hotel star rating systems around the world: the Five-Star rating from the annual Forbes Travel Guide Star Award Winners. The brand’s general manager, Frank Reichenbach, humbly deflected the milestone victory to luck.
The following year, Marco Polo Ortigas made it back-to-back wins, and the GM described the feat as magic. This year, the brand completed a three-peat, and Reichenbach credited the victory to hard work.
“This is a big challenge on a daily basis,” the GM said to a roundtable of media members at the hotel’s award-winning Cantonese restaurant, Lung Hin, with the lapel pin of the Forbes Travel Guide win shining from his blazer.
Marco Polo Ortigas opened in 2014 as the country’s first “sky hotel” as it sits atop a 45-story mixed-use building. It is also the first brand in Manila owned by the Hong Kong-based Marco Polo Hotels Group, following its properties in Davao and Cebu. Located in the Ortigas Commercial Business District, Marco Polo Ortigas offers 316 rooms designed to evoke luxury and comfort with modern design touches and high-end features from the subtle to the obvious, such as mounted hair dryers, in-room bath salts and a Nespresso machine.
But what sets the brand apart, Reichenbach maintains, is its software of unparalleled service that he calls “the extra touch.”
He said one of the major qualifications they look for in potential hires is attitude. “When a staff knocks on the door and have a little interaction with the guest, that’s important. One can be perfect technically, but if you cannot make that moment a little special, then it’s nothing. If you do, to the customers…that’s what they call luxury.”
Such is the buzzword for Forbes Travel Guide, tagged as the “global authority in luxury travel.” Launched in 1958 as the Mobil Travel Guide, it is the only independent star rating service and online travel guide for hotels, restaurants and spas. It also takes credit for creating the Five-Star rating system, which, unfortunately, countless hotel brands and star ratings services have taken advantage of.
It is not unusual in the global hospitality landscape for brands to slap themselves with the “five-star” title, as guests rarely show the slightest of care to verify the source. Thus, claims could grow outrageous. One example is the rise of so-called seven star-rated hotels a few years ago.
“Of those seven-star properties,” said Flip Boyen, chief executive officer of Forbes Travel Guide, “check how many have Forbes Five-Star ratings.”
Boyen was in the country recently as part of a whirlwind three-week Asian tour composed of stops at 128 hotels, including Marco Polo Ortigas. He said what distinguishes them from other star rating services is their “DNA” of integrity—their ratings are not for sale.
Forbes Travel Guide has 56 full-time inspectors who check-in disguised as regular guests for a minimum stay of two nights, with all expenses paid for by the Atlanta-based group. “The inspectors go home and the hotel doesn’t even know they’ve been there,” Boyen said.
Each inspector is highly trained to operate on a 900-point objective criteria. Under those standards, 75 percent are service-based, or dependent on the emotional aspect of one’s stay. It is a given that top hotels have beautiful lobbies, beautiful rooms and great beds, Boyen said, but what makes the difference is the emotional experiences and memories in which the modern luxury traveler is much more interested in.
“However, emotions are not too easy to explain.
It’s not a tick box,” the executive said, adding that this degree of articulation makes the job of an inspector exclusive to a select few. One of the most important qualifications for the post is having the experience in luxury hotels to understand what the manifold standards are based on. Being smart and young helps, too. Boyen took the post as Forbes
Travel Guide CEO late last year. He asked around about the average age of inspectors, and was told it was 38 years old. He thought it was too young for people who should have more than enough hotel experience, but was stopped short at the moment the inspection process was explained to him.
It starts, in Boyen’s words, with the hotel inspector arriving at the hotel by car.
The porter opens the car. In five seconds, the inspector needs to see how is he dressed. How are the hand hygiene, nails, hair, uniform? What exactly does the doorman say? Does he say, “Welcome?”
Does he say, “Welcome to the hotel?” Does he say, “Welcome to Manila?”
The inspector goes out of the car and through the hotel door. The doorman opens the door—exactly the same: The inspector needs to see in five seconds how does he look, what does he say? Then the clock starts ticking. The inspector goes to reception. The clock goes on. How long does it take for me to check-in? How does this check-in happen? Do they look me in the eyes? Is there a relationship being built? Are they really welcoming? Do they really want me to be here? What exactly do they say to me? How long does it take? Now the inspector goes to the elevator. Second clock starts ticking.
How long does it take for the inspector’s luggage to be delivered to the room? The guy that brings it to the room, what does he say in the elevator?
Does he say, “We have a wonderful spa, three restaurants” and “This is the way you get there”?
Does he then open the room door? Does he give a room orientation and explain how everything works in the room?
Then the staff leaves the room. The inspector locks the door, and he or she has everything that has just happened in his head to write down.
According to Boyen, the person whom he asked the average age of inspectors had this to say: “We tried it with the few people that were 55, 60 years old. By the time the room door closed, they had forgotten everything.”
“I nearly fell off my chair,” Boyen said, laughing.
Aside from routine mental exercises, Forbes Travel Guide inspectors have to clock in travel mileage, as well. For the 60th Forbes Travel list published in 2018, covering the year prior as the inspection period, inspectors, trainers and other team members of the star rating company traveled a total of 4,697,296
miles around the world. That’s equivalent to 10 trips around the moon.
For this year’s list, inspectors spent 190 days on the road, boarding 84 flights and writing 727,000 words in reports. The epic novel War and Peace, which took Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy six years to write, has 587,000 words.
This level of dedication and expertise coats the annual Star Award Winners of Forbes Travel Guide with prestige equivalent to that of the Olympics or the Oscars. There are three categories in the coveted list. The entry-level is the Recommended, or “excellent properties with consistently good service and facilities.” Next is the Four-Star, or “exceptional properties, offering high levels of service and quality of facility to match.” Finally, the top of the heap, the Five-Star, or “outstanding, often iconic properties with virtually flawless service and amazing facilities.”
Boyen said that winning the Five-Star honors for three consecutive years, especially the way a young brand like Marco Polo Ortigas Manila did, is “amazing.” He said standards are made more difficult every year to keep up with evolving trends.
“Standards today are very different from what they were 20 years ago,” he said. “For next year, we’re going to develop some sustainability standards and integration of technology.”
For Reichenbach’s part, the Marco Polo Ortigas general manager, their focus is to deliver award-winning service constantly, with sights set on a fourth Five-Star rating from Forbes Travel Guide.
“Our goal is to make sure we stay on top,” he said. “We have to deliver every day—today, tomorrow. It’s a good challenge. It’s also a good training.”