Ruemz Hotel

LABZ : Taylor’s University School of Hotel, Tourism and Culinary Arts, Malaysia’s premier school for Hospitality called, in June 2009, to ask if I would be interested in a Project to conceptualize and develop a unique hotel for them; at their new campus in Sunway, Malaysia. How could I possibly turn down another challenge and an opportunity to frolic in a new playground? This would be the perfect opportunity for me to come up with, perhaps, Malaysia’s first concept hotel! I wouldn’t pass on this opportunity!

Ruemz – the project, initially, was quite a challenge as the School was working on a model where students from the School of Hospitality, Tourism and Culinary Arts would actually run this hotel as part of their learning experience. On the other hand, the building structure for this hotel was originally built as a hostel which equated to a mismatch of sorts but I was tasked to sort matters out. After much thinking, I embarked on a smart partnership program with Panasonic Malaysia, Karcher Malaysia, Sweet Dream, NTPM (Nibong Tebal Paper Mill), Chempro, SelecTV and with the assistance of my other colleague Mr. Numa Marcel Bertrand; BOH Tea and Illy Coffee. In essence, we had assembled quite an impressive team as Ruemz will be the First Concept Hotel in Malaysia focusing on Research & Development.

People in and outside the community doubted that the model could work with students, however with the rise of the Generation Y, I felt that with proper space, guidance and the appropriate organizational culture, this would encourgae students to showcase their potential and capability. Incidentally, during my youth, opportunities like this were rare, thus I took every opportunity to create room where students could play, unafraid, and experiment all day long. The whole idea was to maintain an extremely positive and forward thinking working environment. We based much of our philosophies on being Young, Original and Unpretentious as follows;

We launched Ruemz successfully on 12 February 2011 running the Student model. To everyone’s surprise our guests praised the level of service and the capabilities of the younger generation, who were able to tackle much of the operations aspect on their own. I was elated but this signaled the end of the project, and it was time to move on to another new challenging project, despite me wanting to carry on …. the adventure continues.