“The so-called Macron effect has honestly not yet made a noticeable difference to hotel numbers but the overall sentiment is already positive. Everyone seems optimistic that there is now a chance for change,” said Katja Henke, GM of the 200-room The Peninsula Paris.
“I am sure that the new president of France will be an ideal global ambassador for tourism,” Henke continued, pointing out how much he has achieved over the last year.
Coincidentally, it has been a pretty eventful year for Henke, too. “I arrived here June 27, 2016, tasked with helping what was then a 22-month baby to walk strong (the hotel opened August 2014). Looking back over the last 12 months, we have certainly gained ground. The hotel is now a toddler. I also feel that my 560-strong team has strengthened,” she said.
Henke notices that her younger employees, particularly, are excited about President Macron. This is a general manager, by the way, who visibly walks floors, both back of house and in public areas, and she loves to walk, wherever. “After 13 years in the United States followed by five years in Asia, lastly at The Peninsula Bangkok, it is refreshing to be able to walk to work,” she shared.
Henke had finished on a Friday in Bangkok and never being one for prolonged farewells she flew straight to Paris and moved into The Peninsula’s GM’s apartment, eight minutes’ walk from the hotel, ready to start her new challenge on the Monday (as always, she spent that first day walking floors and speaking to as many people as possible).
One difference is talent flexibility. A key issue for many French workers is adaptable working time to achieve a work-life balance. “Employers here need to take into consideration the unique work/life balance needs of each generation, and each nation,” Henke said. “This is a much trickier task than in the past and lines have certainly blurred. France’s strict labor laws make this challenge even more complicated, and here in Paris I find hotel life is seen as a way to make a living and then you go home, sometimes via a long commute – although public transport here is much better than it was in Bangkok.”
When Henke was last in France, as an intern at Le Bristol Paris some 23 years ago, French was not only compulsory but was the language spoken in every hotel. Now, today, this global German finds her less-than-superlative French is not a handicap (she is still taking weekly lessons). Morning meetings are roughly half and half, English and French.
Henke has always been interested in what is going on in the world so it was not too much of a challenge to adapt to local politics and learn who are the influencers in her new home city; she does love being “forced,” with each change of job, to look at things differently. “I have lived and worked in many countries and this has taught me to be adaptable,” she declared.
Back home in Hamburg, she had always wanted to travel, and she loved people (there was a time when she was attracted to antiques restoration but that required being apprenticed to a carpenter and there was no separate women’s washrooms, a necessity under German law).
At a finishing school in Switzerland she hung out with 40 girls from 20 countries and went on to hotel school in Lucerne. After that she worked her way up, including that Paris internship, until she was GM of Blantyre, which describes itself as a romantic country hotel in the Massachusetts’ Berkshires.
After this she switched, as hotel manager, to Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles (Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel) and then, in 2011, on to China as hotel manager at The Peninsula Shanghai. She transferred to Thailand as GM of The Peninsula Bangkok in December 2012.
“Despite such an exciting career I do believe I have always kept my feet on the ground,” Henke reflected. “Even in Asia, where it is very common, I never had a live-in housekeeper, and I have always enjoyed doing my own supermarket shopping. I also drive myself – back in Bangkok my driver could never understand this. Now, in Paris, I can walk to my heart’s content,” she laughed.