Riley Heng, 28, relocated to Sydney Australia to set up and run a hotel and then faced a bigger crisis than she expected when Covid-19 hit. — TODAY pic
This included setting up the hotel’s management systems, unpacking and arranging furniture that was still wrapped in plastic covers and sourcing for items such as linens and towels. “At that point, we knew that there was a pandemic that was just starting, and we knew we may and the market will be hit somehow, but we thought to just deal with it,” Heng told TODAY.
“I was at this point in my life where I wanted to do something more. I wasn’t sure what I could do but I just knew that I was not comfortable being too comfortable so on a personal level, it was a good thing for me to move and start things afresh.” A view of one of the rooms at MetroResidences Darling Harbour. — Picture by MetroResidences via TODAY
“Some customers even called in not knowing what to do. They asked, ‘What’s going to happen now?’ So I had to deal with a lot of human emotions at that point as well,” she said. She also started to be more transparent with customers about the hotel’s struggles, explaining that it would not be able to survive the crisis should they offer all customers free cancellations.
“When we started to lose the travel market, the next we did was to pivot to the residential market, which was really what MetroResidences has always been doing in Singapore and Japan, its two key markets.”
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