Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming May 2016 22 experience. I was promoted twice, to duty manager at the resort’s pinnacle hotel, the Disneyland. I emigrated to the US because I won a Green Card through a system called the Berman lottery. In New York I talked my way into a job at the Ritz Carlton, which is a five star five diamond operation in the only hotel chain that has won America’s Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. The Award uses Six Sigma, Total Quality Management and is very difficult to attain. On top of SOPs the hotel mapped out every process that could improve its operations, which I thought was amazing. I dived right in and became a certified quality engineer. After a subsequent stint at the New York Four Seasons, I was headhunted for Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. They wanted me to help bring them up to the five star five diamond standards of hotels in New York and San Francisco. One of the people I served under there was Gamal Aziz, who is now President of Wynn Macau. Another was Michael French, who later moved to the Las Vegas Venetian and asked me to follow him, so I joined as Director of Training and Development in 1998. IAG: How was it that you came to Macau, and what was it like in those early days? NM: Sands asked me to come and help with their first casino here, eight weeks before it opened in 2004. It was a difficult assignment because the managers in place had been recruited from Asian properties in the likes of Cambodia and Laos; with a hodge podge of methodologies that were not in alignment. Among the 50 Las Vegas managers we brought in to pull them up to standard, 27 did not yet have a passport. So there were huge cultural differences and we had to get the two sides talking to each other, to bring in processes in time for opening on a huge scale. Las Vegas had a big efficient network of suppliers to feed its machine. But in Macau we had to start from next to nothing. I’d ask to see a supplier of chickens and he’d come in with his produce strapped to the back of a motorbike. On the day of opening a rumor had spread that the first 1,000 people would be given free gambling chips. I was on the third floor, looking down when 45,000 burst in. There were six walk-through metal detectors, but the crowd swept them forward like a tsunami picking up houses. After they filled up the escalator it stopped, and then started going backwards. But we got through the first day OK. Subsequently as the first western casino in Macau, it was an incredible learning experience. IAG: How was it that you came to work for SJM? What was it like working for a Chinese hospitality and gaming company after working for western hospitality and gaming companies for so many years? NM: SJM wanted to know how this upstart Sands had come in from nowhere and taken such a large chunk of their business. They recruited me as Director of Operations Development in November 2006, one month before the scheduled opening of the Grand Lisboa. I took one look and said this won’t happen before February. They didn’t have a gaming management system in place. We had to knock on several doors before we found a supplier willing to work with us to get the bare-bones up and running at such short notice. SJM were skeptical of the processes I wanted to bring in, which had to prove themselves before they were willing to adopt them in other departments. There was no culture Irish hotels rely on the traditional European style of training … In America it’s more about standard operating procedures (SOPs); analyzing knowledge into error-proof steps and putting it down in writing, pictures and video guides … During my internships in the US and Canada I learnt that this way can make a big operation very, very efficient. Nial Murray with Macau’s Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Alexis Tam (second from right), the Lord Mayor of Dublin Críona Ní Dhálaigh (second from left), and Hong Kong’s Irish Consul General Peter Ryan (far left) Industry profile