A 28-YEAR-old hotel continues to strengthen its network with support from family and the Baguio community.
Started by Peter Ng in 1989, Hotel Supreme has continued to innovate and offer the best deals in town, continuing to improve facilities and provide world class service.
Jeff Ng, Peter’s eldest son who now manages the local hotel said, “One big factor that has opened our network is our way of reaching out and helping the community as well. A big influence to my father in community relations is Dr. Charles Cheng. And because of this influence, he is now cascading it to me so our community connection is not really complicated because people can really approach us and we could help a hand in ways that we could from the local barangay day care center to a city wide community event.”
Jeff says the family believes the business is now a vehicle to help to the community continuing the socio-civic legacy his father started.
“We hope Baguio City continues to be a community where people are willing to help, continue to be involved and be proactive. We also hope that the people of our city puts effort in protecting our environment and hopefully will be able to manage all the concerns that would accompany the effects of a thriving economic hub.”
Starting small, Jeff relates the effort of his father in building what they have today, “During that time, we were staying in one of the apartments where SunStar Baguio is located [Wong Building]. The lot where the main building of Hotel Supreme is currently located was vacant and was selling gravel and sand. My father was given the opportunity to purchase the lot but did not have the capital,” Jeff Ng said.
Given this opportunity, Peter Ng approached one of the major banks in the city through the help of the bank manager Mr. Pangilinan who assisted him in securing a loan for the capital used for the initial construction of the hotel.
Slowly, the dream to build a hotel was born.
“At that time, my father’s money was always not enough even for half of the structural building but he said he took that risk and had deep faith in God, and everything now is history to us.”
Peter and Ivy Ng, a young couple at the time, were hands-on in operating the hotel and spent time to sit down with people, handling details and finances on their own.
“My mom ran the kitchen herself. She would be the person who would go to the market and purchase the items while my Dad would go to Manila and purchase materials needed in retrofitting our bathrooms, beds, etc. Both of them were very hands-on to the point that they were really micromanaging everything which I think is the jumpstart of the business,” Jeff said.
He said there were many nights when his father would stay late at night just to make sure someone was checking the evening shift while his mother would then be up early to check on the morning shift.
“As the business grew, we could not really micromanage everything anymore so we needed competent staff. We needed people to help us manage the business who helped us grow the business. And because we were able to tap the right people at the right time, we were able to make the business bigger and make our operations stronger.”
Jeff relates he was always reminded to give 100 percent “We want everything to be beyond what people may have expected and we would have to surprise people. We really spend and place our hearts, mind and soul into the things we are doing. These are the two things na talagang pinukpok sa akin ni Papa.”
Today, Jeff and his brother have adopted changes in running the business, innovating systems and ideas and using technological advancements to shape operations.
“Although not really hands-on in a way but at the same time we are building the business bigger, our father is also open to transferring to other things particularly he’s openness of having to computerize the system of check-in to check-out to our back office. Back in the days it was mano-mano or manual documentation, now he’s slowly adopting to the idea and he allowed me and my brother to computerize the hotel operations and having it decentralized from us but to our people who update and report to us. But we still know the details of how the transactions have progressed.”
Although competition in the hotel business have levelled up significantly and have been very different with the opening of new hotels in the city, Jeff and his father intend to expand their business to be on top of their game.
“We are planning as one of our strategies to put up our new events center in the next two to three years to which we hope it would bring in a new market that would be interested in holding big events in Baguio. At the same time, we are also doing all efforts to improve our services in which it is our desire to become a one-stop-shop that would service our clients wherein everything they would need to coordinate and facilitate since we now have the networks to connect them.”
The family remains to service the community staying strong with values rooted in love, hard work and honesty.