LANDMARK’S INDIVIDUALITY SETS IT APART Francis Zimmerman is mixing the best of Canadian and Thai hospitality as he manages one of Bangkok’s most prominent independent hotels, The Landmark. His moral and hospitality compass have been defined by his Canadian values and they mesh quite nicely with the world-renowned Thai hospitality and service standards.
He likens being the GM of a hotel to being the mayor of a city. “There’s no boredom working in the hotel industry,” he says, “but it’s not for everybody, it’s hard work. In life, you have to find the one thing that makes you tick and motivates you and it didn’t take me long to figure out what I wanted to do. But you must be peopleoriented because in large hotels, you are dealing with thousands of people a day.”
A Vancouver native, who grew up in Calgary, Francis jokes that he became a hotelier by birth as his father Fred Zimmerman was a well-known executive chef for the Westin Hotel Group, based in Calgary for a quarter of a century. To spend more quality time with his sons he would bring Francis and his brother Andre to the hotel on the weekends and put them to work. Francis remembers dunking chocolate cherries for about five hours one Saturday when he was eight – the result, there was more chocolate on him than on the cherries.
Francis has run large-scale city hotels as well as resorts and notes that in many city hotels guests are traveling on a company’s expense but in resorts guests are mostly traveling on their own expense, so expectations are different. Francis recalls that six months into his first overseas posting in Kota Kinabalu he had a “eureka” moment; he was starting to go crazy because he thought that the staff he was working with just weren’t getting it, but he soon realized that it was he who wasn’t getting it as they had been brought up in a different culture. Over time, he developed a system he calls the “50-50 approach” whereby going into any new culture or situation he brings in fifty percent of what he believes is important and dumps the rest, primarily preconceived notions, coming in with an open mind to learn how things work in this new environment and the best way to get the most out of his people.
As such, Francis early on learned a love and passion for the industry, as did his brother who also became a chef. Fair and honest, Francis’ father taught him a great deal about work ethic, and leadership skills. He was a tough, old-school chef who had immigrated to Canada from Switzerland (his mom had immigrated from Finland). At one point, Fred was listed as number 32 of the 100 reasons why Calgary was so great. He became the first North American chef to win the gold medal of distinction at the World Culinary Olympics. He just turned 79, and was an active member of the Canadian Culinary Federation for more than three decades. .
Asked what’s special about the Landmark, Francis says, “The hotel is well-known, as we will soon be celebrating our 31st anniversary, I have never worked in a hotel that had such strong customer loyalty. Every day, I look at the arrivals and notice there’s at least 8-10 guests who have stayed here hundreds of nights. To those repeat guests, the Landmark is a second home: we have extensive histories on our repeat customers and we try and meet their needs and expectations well in advance of their arrival. Emotional connections provide the strongest memories and that’s what we hope to provide.”
Francis started in the kitchen, and then moved to the service side of the food & beverage industry. Honing his cooking skills early; they have won him many friends including his wife as he says, “Who doesn’t like to eat?”. After graduating with a diploma in hotel and restaurant administration from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT) he moved into the front office.
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