In the waterfront: Fresh face peddles memories

Sunday, February 5, 2012

EXCITING changes await the 15-year-old Waterfront Airport Hotel & Casino Mactan this year under the leadership of its new hotel manager, Ma. Theresa S. Fernandez. She is a fresh face in the local hotel industry, but she is certainly no neophyte in her job—having worked with reputable hotels around the country and in Switzerland.

“So far, so good,” she said, describing the past month that she has been with the hotel. “We’ve basically assessed what we need to focus on and the changes we need to do.”

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Theresa aims to upgrade both the service and physical aspects of the hotel. “That’s what the other Waterfronts are doing,” she said. “Lahug is now renovating itself.

Manila Pavilion is undergoing that. Where I came from, Waterfront Insular Davao, we’re almost complete as far as the upgrading is concerned.”

“But bottom line, for me, it’s still the service. It’s still the human touch,” she said. “If your guest is not comfortable or does not feel that the services rendered are good, it’s nothing. It is always how you make the guests feel home away from home.”

Theresa, or Tet as she is fondly called, finished a degree in commerce major in hotel and restaurant management from St. Scholastica’s College, Manila. She then pursued further studies in the prestigious Ecole Les Roches in Switzerland.

“I was kind of deceived in the beginning,” she recalled amusedly. “When my family would have a treat dining in a hotel, I would see these people in coats and it all looked very glamorous. At that time, I didn’t know the ins and outs yet.”

“After getting the degree and going to the physical aspect of the industry, it was then that I realized how tough the job was. It was not the coat; it was perfection.

But I think it was that experience, it was that challenge that made me more inclined to pursue this career.”

Theresa began her career in the hotel industry as assistant maitre’d in Hotel Castell in Switzerland. Over the years, she has been with Hotel Elite, Relais de Lavaux, Holiday Inn Manila, and Boracay Regency Hotel and Convention. She was the hotel manager of Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao for five years prior to moving to the airport hotel.

An articulate perfectionist is a very apt description of Waterfront’s new leader. She is concise in describing her goals for the hotel, as well as determined to see them through.

“What we would really like to achieve is that consistency of the delivery of service, no matter what part or area of Waterfront you are in,” she said. “That would lead to basically a very wonderful experience for the guests, and that experience becomes a memory. No amount of money can buy memory. It’s a genuine feeling implanted in the heart.”

“Cebuanos have been very supportive of the Waterfront group,” she finished off. “And I would like to give back immediately to the Cebuanos by giving them a much better facility.”