by Nigel Huxtable

The opening of the next Cotai Strip development has been pushed back to the second half of the year, said the general manager Antoine Chahwan yesterday.
The Four Seasons Hotel announced last year that it planned to open in June, however this has now  been delayed until the third quarter of the year.
Although the project has not experienced any major problems, a precise date is difficult to hit because of all of the parties involved, said Mr Chahwan.
“June was the target date but we have always said we were going to be around the third quarter of 2008,” he said.
“We can only estimate [an opening date], I'm not the one personally putting everything in that building.”
The hotel will be the second of eight parcels of land Las Vegas Sands Corporation is developing along the Cotai Strip.
The building construction and interior are on target for third quarter completion, however the hotel is still to recruit the majority of the 1,000 staff it needs and secure a license – a step that has plagued recent new hotels.
“It [the license] is in the process,” said Mr Chahwan.
Although hoping to recruit as many local workers as possible, Four Seasons will also look to Southeast Asian countries and Four Seasons hotels in Hong Kong and Shanghai for the staff needed.
The 360 room hotel is part of a chain of 75 properties in 31 countries which prides themselves on  quality of service, which will be a major consideration in the hiring decisions soon to be made, said Mr Chahwan.
“The luxury we offer is about the service, the experience...you would walk away with the sense that wow, this works,” he said.
“You have to look for people that have the right attitude -  service passion and attitude - that is not something you can teach, if you have the right attitude we can teach you anything you want to learn.”
Each recruit must go through five interviews and make it through a meeting with the general manager to get in the door.
Mr Chahwan, who has worked at five of the company's hotels including Sydney, Australia and the Bahamas, uses a golden rule to assess potential employees.
“Most of the times your past behaviour will determine your future,” he said.
“When you have to speak about an experience you have had – when you describe that to me I can tell whether you're a passionate person or if you're just telling me what I want to hear.”
The hotel will train each of its staff in-house. To compensate for lower levels of hospitality experience expected from recruits from the region, a higher ratio of staff to rooms are hired.
Upwards of 2.5 staff per room will work at the hotel, while the chain's hotels in Australia and the USA employ approximately 1.7 staff per room.
The hotel complex will include a 130 table casino, four restaurants, a bar and luxury shopping malls filled with brands such as Louis Vuitton, Prada and Hermes.
Guests will also be able to walk to the Venetian Macao via a bridge to the Grand Canal Shoppes.
The general manager believes it is the hotel chain's reputation that will attract visitors to its rooms.
Hotels in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Japan and South Korea have gone some way to building the brand's reputation in the region, said Mr Chahwan.
“If you are already a Four Seasons user and you are travelling to a destination you are going to try and see if that destination has a Four Seasons,” he said.
“We had 27 million visitors in 2007 and we have 360 rooms, chances are we are going to have enough visitors looking for the Four Seasons brand.”
Moving from his last assignment in the Bahamas, Mr Chahwan began working on the project in Hong Kong during April last year and relocated to Macau in July.
The timing of the Four Season's opening is also an advantage for the group as it will have a settling-in period of at least six-months before the next Cotai projects open, said Mr Chahwan.
Meanwhile a group of some 56 staff working out of a NAPE office block are furiously working to have everything ready for day one.
“There are a lot of things that are pending with the opening, so we hope to stay on target but we don't see any reason why we won't,” said Mr Chahwan.
“Menu design, writing menus, getting your training set up, your operation manuals, there are a lot of things to do before a hotel opens.”