Hotels

Hotel Corner

Fannie Tsang, Resident Manager at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort

Fannie Tsang, Resident Manager at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, shares her thoughts on her hotel career to date and Disneyland’s latest hotel addition, Disneyland Explorers Lodge.

I grew up in Hong Kong but went abroad to Hawaii to study Hotel Management. I fell in love with the hotel industry as a kid when on family vacations we stayed at nice hotels that all looked so glamorous. I started my career at a 5-star hotel in Honolulu at the front desk. Then I worked for another 5-star hotel when I came back to Hong Kong, also another front office position. Then I was invited to be part of the initial hotel team when Disneyland opened in 2005, and, happily, I've been here ever since.

My favourite part of the job is the interaction with people, especially our guests, and making sure they have a fantastic arrival experience. Almost all our guests stay here as part of their “Magic Kingdom” experience and from the moment they are here, we want to create that magic feeling for them wherever they go – whether it’s meeting a favourite Disney character or enjoying the ambience of a hotel such as Disney Explorers Lodge.

There are three hotels here at Hong Kong Disneyland Resort, with more than 1700 rooms in all. The latest, the Explorers Lodge, offers a highly immersive and delightful ‘adventure and exploration’ theme. We were also able to incorporate into the new hotel’s design lessons learned from the other hotels since they opened, to help maximize guest comfort and experience. For example, 70% of our rooms have connecting doors to help accommodate large groups with sometimes several families traveling together.

Disney is famous for its unique culture which reaches everyone and permeates everything we do. The best way to describe our culture is our singular focus to make our guests feel special and “magic”, whether at the park or the hotel, whether they are a child or an adult, and that focus is consistently delivered across all Disney venues the world over.

The key to being a good general manager is to really understand the guests’ needs and engage our whole team to meet those needs. And in Disneyland, some of our guests’ needs can be quite special. For example, we often have guests wanting to propose marriage at our hotels. Our cast members delight in helping the guests to make sure the proposal goes off smoothly and romantically – they also have tremendous fun helping too.

What I like best about Hong Kong is its food.I love dim sum, but the city offers so much more in terms of types of food and different restaurant experiences. I love to explore and try out new restaurants and cuisines.

My three recommendations for tourists in Hong Kong are: Dim sum, of course, and try as many kinds as possible; visit Disneyland is must, as a centrepiece of your vacation, and come often because your experience will be different every time; and finally, visit some of Hong Kong’s scenic points such as the Peak, or explore hiking trails on some of our mountains and islands for unparalleled vistas of our beautiful city.

（Edited on 6 Sep 2017）