Banker chairing hotel chain

FDH Bank managing director Philip Madinga, was a renowned banker recently appointed as board chairperson for listed hotel chain Sunbird Tourism Limited. Our Reporter ORAMA CHINAMULUNGU caught up with him to give ear to his vision and objectives on his new appointment.

: Congratulations on your appointment as board chair of Sunbird Tourism Limited, how does it feel?

: It feels great and I feel honoured to be given an opportunity to chair an entity with the largest hospitality and tourism enterprise in Malawi. I am particularly delighted to join a winning and successful team at Sunbird. The consistent results achieved by Sunbird speak volumes of the kind of team that you have at Sunbird. I am looking forward to working with such a team.

: Being a banker, what skills do you bring to the tourism industry? 

: This is not the first time for me to be involved with Sunbird Tourism Limited and the tourism sector. During the early years of my career in the late 1990s’ at Investment and Development Bank Limited (now Indebank), I was involved in the appraisal and monitoring of a number of refurbishment programmes for this hotel chain. At the time, Sunbird was operating as Tourism Development and Investment Corporation (TDIC). I am, therefore, excited to be going back to work with the team at Sunbird and share some of the experiences learnt from those early days. I hope I can use the experience that I gained during the early time of my career to contribute towards the growth and development of the tourism industry.

Specifically though, I hope I can use my banking experience to help support the tourism industry raise financing for the development of this industry in Malawi. The tourism industry has the potential to generate both local and foreign exchange as well as create employment. However, for our tourism industry to do so it requires a lot of investment and raising financing for projects is not always easy. We need to develop our infrastructure —roads, airports, etc, to make Malawi an attractive destination for tourists. All this requires a lot of financing.

I hope my experience and the network I have with development financial institutions will be useful in linking the country to potential financiers interested to support this sector.

I also hope that I can use the experience I have gained working with SMEs in other sectors during my banking career to promote and support financing and banking requirements for those SMEs interested doing business in the tourism industry.

: What gaps do you see in Sunbird and how do you plan to fill them?

: I have just recently been appointed so I do not want to make early judgements about what is right and what is wrong. When you look at past results of this hotel chain you will notice that it has had consistent year on year growth and has been profitable, so there are probably a lot of things that are working well. It’s important, therefore, to acknowledge the excellent work that management, board and staff at Sunbird have been doing over the past years. I think they have done an excellent job under a tough and challenging operating environment. I am, therefore, just really looking forward to helping Sunbird meet its aspiration of being the preferred brand in the hospitality industry.

Having said that to achieve its aspiration maybe we will just need to reinforce how we can provide excellent customer service to our customers. We may have to explore ways of accelerating the refurbishment programme but this may require a rethink as to how the hotel chain can raise financing. For example is there scope to restructure Sunbird’s balance sheet again, following a successful restructure a few years ago and explore alternative financingrequirements?

I will competently comment in more detail once I have settled in this new role.

Q: What targets have you set to improve or boost the hotel chain?

: Competition in the tourism industry is on the rise.  To beat this competition will require that the hotel becomes a lot more customer centric. Being a regular customer of Sunbird, I can attest to the fact that Sunbird has made good progress in this regard. I am always impressed by the warm welcome and hospitality that I get at any of the Sunbird Hotels. However, I also believe that there is always room for improvement. I would, therefore, place customer service as one of the key priority and focus area for the group. And in order for us to be the best in service, will require a lot of investment in training and development of staff at Sunbird to get them ready for the ever increasing demands of customers. Of course, there will also be need to continue with improvement of the ambience of our facilities and dealing with outdated infrastructure across all our hotels.

: How do you plan to grow the hotel chain profit base?

: As I  have indicated, I believe the hotel is well managed and when you look at results achieved in the past few years you will notice that it has been profitable, so there are probably a lot of things that are working well.

I hope I can build on this success achieved so far and get Sunbird to become a dominant player in the tourism industry. I hope that if we can address and improve   customer service across the hotel chain; improve the ambience of the hotels and address shortfalls relating to the infrastructure of the hotels, Sunbird’s performance will grow from strength to strength.

Improved profitability and performance will depend on how well we consistently implement these initiatives, among others.