February 2006
At Your Service
From Down Under to Upper Crust—Meet The Man Behind The Mandarin
The first law of hotel management is discretion. That’s why when I—full of apocryphal stories about Paris Hilton, Oasis and Mariah Carey—asked about “guests from hell,” Michael Ziemer deflected my question with his charm.
“Luckily, we have never dealt with one (‘GFH’) here,” replied the general manager of Munich’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel, smiling broadly. “We have never been visited by any ‘special’ people.” He then proceeded to recite a list of honored guests from recent months—a list that reads like a who’s who of the rich and famous: Boris Becker, U2, Penelope Cruz, Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom and Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates, as well as a cakewalk of German sporting and cinema stars.
When walking by the hotel earlier this year, I swore I saw Dustin Hoffman in the lobby. “You probably did,” says Ziemer, over the strains of Strauss’s Blue Danube playing in the background of the lobby. “He was staying here while shooting Perfume (based on the novel by Munich resident Patrick Süskind).”
Michael Ziemer, originally from the Snowy Mountains near Sydney, Australia, caused something of a sensation when he took over the general manager’s position of Munich’s most prestigious hotel in September 2004. “I simply told the staff that I wanted them to enjoy themselves. That came as a shock to many of them,” he explains.
“Coming from Australia, where friendliness comes naturally, I wanted guests here at the Mandarin Oriental to walk into a room of smiling people. You can only achieve that if the staff enjoy themselves, are not scared to have a laugh and, above all else, don’t take themselves too seriously. After all, it is just a job.”
Although unconventional, Ziemer’s approach seems to be paying off. Not only do the 53 rooms and 20 suites of the Neo-Renaissance-style hotel in Neuturmstrasse have the highest occupancy rates of any five-star hotel in Germany, they also have the highest rates (€ 340–€ 1,300 per night).
“This is,” he notes, “something that hotels in Berlin and Frankfurt would love to achieve. But it also places pressure on us. As I tell our staff, we have the highest rates, so people expect we are the best. The challenge is to rise to that level every day.”
The curious aspect of Ziemer’s career is that at no point in his youth did he ever have an interest in hotel management. Growing up the son of an auto mechanic in the bushland of Australia, he originally wanted to be a chef.
“I wanted to cook, but my dad said, ‘No son of mine is going to cook.’ Eventually I rebelled and arranged an interview with an executive chef who advised me to do hotel management,” explains Ziemer. “‘Hotel management? What’s all that about?’, I asked.”
Some 19 years later, after a career in senior management positions in hotels as far flung as Saudia Arabia, Australia and Hong Kong, Ziemer arrived in Munich. The years of experience he has gathered around the world have stood him in good stead as he systematically began implementing a program that emphasized quality.
“It’s the one thing I don’t compromise on,” he replied. “We either do something well, or we don’t do it at all. As a result, when guests arrive, they are often blown away by our young, enthusiastic and easygoing team. We are not perceived as being a typical German hotel.”
An indication of the level of attention Ziemer stresses are the arrival briefings. Every morning, the staff sits down and goes through every single arriving guest and each of their preferences.
“We know their arrival details, their flight details. We call their secretaries for their likes and dislikes. We have a dedicated guest recognition person who has no other function than to establish these details, so … when you walk into our hotel, we already know everything about you.”
For someone who has jetted around the globe, stayed in some of the world’s leading hotels and dined in some of the best restaurants, Munich must seem provincial. “Not so,” says Ziemer. The son of German immigrants to Australia, he grew up bilingual and feels at ease here. “Munich has an incredible amount of class and charm. It has a lot of culture and is very proud of it. It may not be as multicultural as other places and so appears a little more withdrawn, but once you get to know the people, they are very loyal.”
Despite his attachment to Munich, there is no doubt where Ziemer will one day end up: “Sitting on the veranda of a house in Byron Bay with a bottle of Australian Chardonnay. That’s the dream. When you live in Europe, you live in the world. But I still miss the Australian lifestyle, the food, the wine and the mentality. You can’t but help get homesick for it.”
