“A background in F&B really helps in all management sectors – having to deal with unruly customers in an Australian bistro-with-rooms when I was 18 helped me grow up fast,” says Anneke Brown, general manager of Como The Treasury in Perth, Western Australia.
An only child, Brown traveled extensively with her parents and loved staying in hotels from an early age. “I remember at 12 sitting on a beach in Bali and sketching a resort design,” she remembered. But her all-girls’ private school in her native Perth was more tuned to directing its students to a future in law or medicine, and she went on to do a Commerce degree at the University of Western Australia.
“I worked my way through all four years of college, serving and doing whatever the bistro needed, and that reinforced my determination to go on to a career in hospitality. But first I needed to learn more of the whole travel and tourism industry,” Brown explained.
After graduating, 10 months in a Sydney travel agency trying to divert customers who wanted merely the cheapest price to think instead of the value of more-expensive experiences was more than enough, and having learned Indonesian through her many earlier holidays in Bali, Brown headed back to that island.
“Guy Heywood, then with Amanresorts at Amankila, was terrifically helpful and has remained a mentor ever since,” Brown recalled. “I became Amanresorts’ reservation manager for Indonesia and that was the start of seven really interesting years with Amanresorts.”
That period included being in Sri Lanka during the devastating 2004 tsunami, when none of the guests at Amangalla in Galle were hurt, and although her 280 staff survived, many lost family members. “I grew up fast again at that time, adding, sadly, a layer of skepticism,” she said.
Seeing donated consignments of food left rotting at Colombo’s airport rather than reaching the suffering, and experiencing the self-interested demands of some aid workers, was saddening. But Brown moved on to run Longitude 131, a tented resort at Australia’s sacred Uluru (Ayers Rock), and then to work with Avana, a training company. This led, via her network of contacts, to meeting Adrian Fini, developer of Como The Treasury, Perth, which he saw as good community ethics.
“This is a truly unique property,” Brown declared. “Adrian Fini had dreamed for 19 years of converting three adjacent civic buildings, all late 19th century, into a luxury hotel that was part of a philanthropic offering to the community. Apart from our 48 bedrooms, obviously off-limits to visitors, the rest of the complex is open at all times, for locals and visitors to come and share.”
Brown heads a team of 320, who also look after public sitting rooms filled with stunning local art, plus half a dozen restaurants, from fine dining to a beer hall with 18 small-batch craft beers constantly on tap (when a new brew is inserted, a projected menu on the wall is instantly changed). There is a wine store with prices for to-go or drink in, and a late-night cocktail bar. The four-room spa is in what was a late 19th century strong room. Retail outlets, some on the first floor, some beneath, include working chocolate and perfume stores, and the hotel’s florist works in full view of passersby.
“We soft-opened October 2015 and Prince Charles cut the official ribbon a month later,” the GM said proudly. “Six months after, Gourmet Traveller magazine deemed us best hotel in the whole of Australia.”
But Brown is not complacent, and she learns a lot from such other mentors as Como’s Christina Ong and COO Hansjoerg Meier – and from her husband of three years, a paramedic, whose ambition is to make life better for others.