Life.Culture.Discovery.

The Peninsula Hong Kong’s first female general manager Rainy Chan on burnout and the joy of reinvention

A colleague once told her she’d never make it at The Peninsula, ‘an old boys’ club’ – now she’s executive director of Hong Kong Design Centre, which runs Business of Design Week

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Rainy Chan has been executive director at Hong Kong Design Centre for almost a year. Photo: Alexander Mak

Published: 3:15pm, 1 Dec 2025Updated: 4:46pm, 9 Dec 2025

MY HONG KONG CHILDHOOD was very typical. I’m the oldest of five girls. From a young age, I carried the responsibility of helping my mum look after my sisters, so I developed a big sister mentality. That sense of looking after people is deeply rooted in my personality. Hospitality was introduced to me through one incident at my first job, selling advertising for a woman’s magazine. I met the PR manager of a hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. I was very young and my first impression was she’s so beautiful, nice and elegant. I wondered, “Do all people in hotels look like this?” I didn’t really think much about it until I moved to Hawaii, in the United States. This was around 1984.

Rainy Chan in Hawaii, in the 1980s. Photo: courtesy Rainy Chan

MY AMERICAN THEN-HUSBAND wanted to move back home so I went with him. I wanted to work because it was boring to stay home. I applied for a job at a hotel in Maui and got an interview. Being from Hong Kong, I was very well dressed. But Hawaii is very different; everybody else was in flip-flops and T-shirts. The lady who interviewed me was wearing a muumuu (a loose-fitting, brightly coloured Hawaiian dress). We chatted and she said, “You are very pleasant and elegant, but if you work at the front desk, you have to know how to type. You have to do a typing test.” I had never learned to type so I asked, “Can I have two weeks?” My then-mother-in-law had an old typewriter in her basement. I took it out, dusted it off and practised, practised, practised every day. Anyway, I took the test and failed miserably. However, the interviewer said, “I’ve never seen anyone so determined. I’m going to hire you for your potential, not your ability.” Since then, this has been my management and leadership guiding principle. I always look at someone’s potential, not their ability.

Rainy Chan (second from left) with her front-desk colleagues at a hotel in Maui, Hawaii. Photo: courtesy Rainy Chan

I REALLY LIKE BEING in a hotel. You meet all kinds of people and I got to do all kinds of pleasant and unpleasant things. Hotel life helped me become a problem solver and trained my EQ (emotional intelligence). After one year, I was promoted to assistant manager. I stayed in Hawaii for seven years. One day in 1994, a headhunter called. The Peninsula in Hong Kong was looking for an office manager.

I COULDN’T BELIEVE I was actually being considered by this amazing establishment. The then-general manager, Peter Borer, interviewed me and he would become my mentor. When I told the Hawaii general manager that I was going to work for The Peninsula, he said, “You’re never going to make it there. It’s an old boys’ club.” Of course, I struggled in the beginning because nobody had seen a Chinese woman as a front office manager. Guests would say, “I asked for the manager, not the secretary” and “Where’s your boss?” But my journey with The Peninsula was amazing. I worked for them in Bangkok, Hong Kong and New York.

Rainy Chan’s first day as GM of Peninsula Bangkok. Photo: courtesy Rainy Chan

I WAS RESIDENT MANAGER in Manhattan on September 11 during the attack. I had to handle some very emotional moments. I would say that was a career turning point. Leadership does not come from managing everyday business, it is revealed in extreme situations. I remember I was having breakfast with a guest. Mayor Rudy Giuliani was in the restaurant, too, at a business breakfast. All of a sudden, they all got up and rushed out of the hotel. Then I was paged by the office. That’s when the second plane hit the World Trade Centre.

EVERYONE THOUGHT it was an accident. Then all the phone lines got cut off. That’s when we really entered emergency mode. Hotels are very organised this way. The entire senior management team met immediately. We were the first response team, assessing where everybody was and setting up a command post. I was put in charge. I had to keep my team calm while security and housekeeping searched floor by floor to make sure every guest was accounted for. The hotel was closed by then because we were under attack.

Rainy Chan at the office during early Peninsula days. Photo: courtesy Rainy Chan

SOME GUESTS CAN BEHAVE so funnily. One lady insisted she needed to get her Starbucks coffee. I’m like, “Ma’am, nothing is open outside.” But she was just scared and wanted company. Of course, all the staff were worried about their families, too. I always feel that hotel staff are really underestimated and undervalued, because often they do all the dirty work, putting aside their own family – like when it’s a typhoon signal 10, they still have to go to work, right?

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