With more than 20 years of experience, most recently as General Manager of the prestigious Villa Le Blanc, a Gran Meliá Hotel, this talented and passionate leader is now elevating the guest experience at the first luxury Gran Meliá branded resort in Southeast Asia.
Sheraton Nha Trang Hotel & Spa is delighted to announce the appointment of Ms Tran Thi My Dung (Mandy Tran) as Director of Sales & Marketing, effective January 15, 2013.
Less than two years after opening as the first 5-star, internationally renowned hotel on the beach in Vietnam, Sheraton Nha Trang has notched another first in the country’s march to maturation as a tourist destination with the appointment of a female general manager, Catherine Racsko. Trailblazing is nothing new to the Australian hotelier. She was the first foreign female to pick up the reins at a Starwood property in China where she worked at Le Meridien She Shan Shanghai. While it’s tempting to dismiss the differences between the sexes when it comes to managing a hotel, Racsko insists there is a difference — not better, not worse, just different. “The so-called ‘female touch’ can be a very positive characteristic for a GM,” she said. “We tend to pay closer attention to detail and can multi-task better than most men. It’s also, I would say, easier for us to convey a contagiously enthusiastic spirit!” For other reasons, too, Racsko expects to feel right at home in Vietnam where, like many foreign travelers, she’s already observed the prevalence of a hard-working female workforce, both among the ranks of the blue collar and white collar workforces. “There are a lot of really influential women in this country,” Racsko said, just weeks into her appointment. “Maybe this is a legacy of the Hai Ba Trung sisters, or of the crucial role women played during Vietnam’s struggle for independence, but it is immediately apparent.”
Hired in September as the new seaside property’s executive chef, the 34-year-old Frenchman has spent the better part of the past decade in Southeast Asia, including two stints in Vietnam.
Two years after leaving Vietnam for a stint as general manager of the Sheraton Bandung Hotel and Towers in Indonesia, Scott Hodgetts has returned to launch the 281-room Sheraton Nha Trang Hotel and Spa. The veteran Sheraton executive expects to open the commanding, 30-storey tower on the Bay of Nha Trang in July as the first internationally renown 5-star hotel on the beach in Vietnam. In his first Vietnam post, Hodgetts worked three-and-a-half years at the Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers, initially as the hotel’s operations manager and then as the executive assistant manager. The Australian kicked off his hospitality career with Sheraton as an accountant at the company’s Hobart hotel, and subsequently rose through the ranks with additional postings in Australia, Indonesia, China, Hong Kong and New Zealand. He only relinquished his focus on financial analysis when he made the jump to EAM in Saigon. But he reckons his background as a controller is ever more important these days.