Sangathy
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Mastering Showbiz

CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca

Lights, Camera, Action!

In the mid and late 1980s, my wife and I were actively involved with the fashion industry and modelling for TV ads. Our social life in Colombo was busy and my work schedule as the Director of Food and Beverage at Le Galadari Meridien Hotel was hectic. In spite of that, we managed to find time to appear in popular Christmas TV shows and fashion shows, including a top bridal show held at Hotel Lanka Oberoi. My PR outside the hotel enhanced business for Le Galadari Meridien. I was often invited to welcome well-known, actresses, beauty queens and showbiz personalities attending beauty pageants and fashion shows. I also contributed as an occasional judge for national beauty contests.

At Le Galadari Meridien Hotel, my team frequently organized theme food festivals in our restaurants. We also promoted Sri Lankan food well at the Marco Polo, the hotel’s oriental restaurant, and were invited to organize three large Sri Lankan food festivals at Le Meridien hotels overseas. My previous experience in organizing and leading such festivals in Hong Kong and Singapore became useful. We used those food festivals to provide overseas exposure to our chefs and middle managers.

As a part of my research for work, my wife and I attended all food festivals organized by competitor, five-star international hotels in Colombo. Our attendance was important particularly at the newest hotel, Colombo Hilton, which maintained excellent standards. The second Food and Beverage Manager of Colombo Hilton was a school mate of mine. We eventually came to an agreement to coordinate themes and dates of our food festivals at both hotels. This way we avoided direct competition over the same period of time and with similar products. In any business, one must have good communication with the main competition.

Hospitality and Showbiz

I gradually came to the conclusion that hospitality and show business which go hand in hand and have many similarities, is really one industry focusing on entertaining customers, while making profits. I was fortunate that the top bands, western musicians, entertainers and lobby musicians were contracted by the Food and Beverage division of Le Galadari Meridien to provide classy entertainment to enhance the overall dining experience of our customers.

Entertainment was an essential element of our total food and beverage operation. Usually, in the evening, we had live music in three locations of the hotel. I learnt to treat entertainers as very important members of the hotel family. That orientation proved to be mutually beneficial.

Le Galadari Meridien provided me an opportunity to develop a new hobby, as part of my work. I gradually learnt a lot from the hotel entertainers and became a busy showbiz producer. I liked the famous 1946 song, “There’s No Business, Like Show Business.” This song is a slightly, tongue-in-cheek salute to the glamour and excitement of a life in show business. I chose it as the opening, choreographed act for one of the shows I produced.

Business of Night Clubs

Colombo 2000, the night club of Le Galadari Meridien faced tough competition from night clubs in the other five five-star hotels in Colombo, as well as from a few hotels in Mount Lavinia. A couple of our competitor hotels used the services of top entertainers as Hotel Entertainment Managers. At Le Meridien, I happily looked after that function.

I felt that not having a separate entrance (adjoining a car park) to Colombo 2000 was a hotel design error. Most of the customers of Colombo 2000 were locals and all of them used the main entrance of the hotel to walk towards the night club. This made the lobby of the hotel jam-packed during the evenings of Fridays and Saturdays. I knew that ‘people attract people’ in the hospitality business, but we had to make extra arrangements with help from the Hotel Security Manager, to ensure that the lobby was not overcrowded and noisy. These annoyances at times upset some of our European guests.

On a positive note, I was happy that Colombo 2000 had a modern and futuristic appeal with its brand, layout, furniture, interior décor, colour scheme and lighting. Compared to restaurants, night clubs have a shorter life cycle, and is a different ball-game. Therefore, operators of night clubs had to be innovative in changing nightclub concepts more frequently to be trendy, fashionable and marketable. I found it useful to check night club themes and special effects in Asian countries more advanced than Sri Lanka, such as Singapore (which was around two years ahead of nightclub trends in Sri Lanka).

Competing night clubs of Colombo 2000 had either live bands or DJs, so we combined both. Most of the night clubs in Sri Lanka at that time had a limited operation of three or four nights, focusing on the weekend business. I took a chance on making Colombo 2000 a seven-day operation with live bands every day and opening at the same time (9:30 pm). I also used promotional gimmicks for slow days of business. These included, weekly ‘ladies’ night’ with free entrance for ladies, daily midnight supper at discount rates, free entrance for all after 3:00 am and free, non-alcoholic mixers for liquor etc. We soon realized that customers loved those initiatives.

We used ‘the seven-day’ operation as the unique selling proposition in our ad campaigns. We became very busy and the dominant night club in Colombo. With earning unprecedented levels of tips and a service charge, the team of employees at Colombo 2000 were very happy. They were very proud of what we achieved together. Late 1980s were heydays of night club business in Colombo.

Soon, Colombo 2000 had many attractive offers from liquor companies, such as Vat 69 Whisky for major joint promotions. When in 1987, Michael Jackson commenced his first solo concert tour launched in support of his seventh studio album ‘Bad,’ his fans around the world went crazy, including the Sri Lankan youth in Colombo and large cities.

The ‘Bad’ tour by the King of Pop, spanned 16 months, 123 concerts for over four million fans across 15 countries. When Pepsi Cola signed a second, $10 million deal with Michael Jackson in support of his “Bad” album and tour, he appeared in a few ads. This was arguably one of the greatest ad campaigns in history of TV, and influenced the pop culture around the world.

I wanted Colombo 2000 to ride the mega wave of ‘Bad’. I approached the bottling agents for Pepsi in Sri Lanka and made a deal with them. This included some attractive financial sponsorship, joint ads and nightly ‘Bad’ album videos played on a big screen at Colombo 2000 when the bands took their breaks. It was a very successful promotion, which significantly increased attendance and revenue, as well as promoting Pepsi sales as our preferred cola. Coca Cola was certainly not pleased!

After repeatedly watching all those music videos for songs in ‘Bad,’ I became an ardent fan of Michael Jackson. I made a special trip to Singapore in 1993, with family and friends, to watch one of his ‘Dangerous’ world tour shows. Despite the earliest sexual abuse accusations affecting his schedule, and at times, focus, his performance on that night was simply magical! He was a once in a generation talent and his popularity could only be compared to Elvis and the Beatles.

From a Brainstorming, a Show is Born…

June, July and August were the busiest months for banquets. We catered for hundreds of big weddings during that period. After that the banqueting occupancy went down until the Christmas and New Year period. In addition to organizing various food festivals in restaurants, I felt that we should create our own events to fill the ballroom during low occupancy months.

I commenced brainstorming with the ten, departmental managers in my division and then with the supervisors. Historically, these professionals were accustomed to taking orders, rather than ‘thinking outside the box’ to create new business. I was somewhat disappointed that our team could not generate ideas to optimize profits through new creations.

One day I had a business chat with Sohan Weerasinghe, a lawyer-turned-musician who was the band leader and front man of the main band of Colombo 2000 – Sohan and the X-Periments with Estelle. The main purpose of my chat with him was to negotiate a revenue-based payment per night for their new contract.

Fridays and Saturdays were the best days for Colombo 2000, when we had a full house of over 400 customers dancing till 4:00 am. On Sundays the customers and revenue were reduced to about half, but we were paying the band the same rate, regardless of attendance. That did not make sense to me. I negotiated a better contract.

Sohan eventually accepted my proposal for a different, revenue-based, fee formulae per night. Sohan was shrewd, diplomatic, intelligent and funny. He also had a good business sense and practical ideas. We quickly became good friends. After my first contract negotiation meeting with him, I felt that I should meet all hotel entertainers under contract at the hotel for a brainstorming session. Unlike my brainstorming sessions with the departmental managers and supervisors, the sessions with the entertainers were productive with some great ideas for the year 1987.

After explaining my objective of improving the ballroom occupancy during the slow months, I did not talk much, but encouraged musicians to suggest solutions. They came with a few ideas and we decided to organize a series of weekly shows under the theme ‘Musical Stars of 1986’ in the ballroom. A key aim was to promote young musicians who had performed in western bands around the country in the previous year. All musicians under contract at Le Meridien contributed on an honorary basis as judges for these new, weekly contests and as performers for the gala final show.

As a young child I grew up on stage when my father wrote, produced and directed several stage plays. However, I had no musical talent or experience in being a producer. When, I was chosen as the project leader and the show producer of ‘Musical Stars of 1986’, by the musicians working at the hotel, I had to learn quickly about production essentials from those same musicians.

I negotiated with potential sponsors and arranged many attractive prizes. These included free weekly publicity in the Sunday Observer newspaper, free return airline tickets to Singapore from Air Lanka and free accommodation at Le Meridien Singapore for the winning band – all of which were very attractive prizes. Altogether, 22 bands of young musicians competed for the title of ‘The Best Musical Group of 1986’.Sohan handled the sound and I coordinated lighting and special effects with the hotel’s engineering department. I also coordinated the logistics, ads, publicity and ticket sales, and I prepared a detailed outline giving cues and timing for each segment of the final show — in consultation with the team of hotel musicians. I gradually improved my skills in developing these cue sheets for shows and detailed story boards for music videos, I directed in later years. The final show was sold out quickly and it was a big success. The hotel received a vast amount of free publicity and also earned good profits.

Producing Two More Music Shows

The day after the ‘Musical Stars of 1986’ final show, I received many calls from sponsors, musicians and people who purchased tickets for the show. They all were pleased and Mr. Harold Pieris, the Editor of the Sunday Observer, asked me, “Chandi, when is your next show? We will fully support you and provide publicity.” I was motivated and started thinking of a newsworthy concept for another show.

At that point, two of the hotel’s lobby musicians, Priyanthi and Raja walked into my office with a request. They were the best husband and wife musician duo in Sri Lanka. They were on a contract with the hotel for one year. “Chandi, we have been offered an excellent contract to perform in a five-star hotel in the Middle East. We are wondering if you would be kind enough to release us from the Galadari contract, six months before the contract expires.”

I thought for a minute, and then said, ” I will release you, but on one condition. You have to perform free for our next major show, which I will produce during your last week in Colombo.” When they asked about the concept of the show, I said, “It will be a grand farewell for both of you. I will get a big line-up of top western musicians to sing at the show. Shall we call your show ‘A Farewell to Priyanthi & Raja’?”

Priyanthi and Raja were overjoyed with my suggestion, but were a bit concerned that their fans would think that they would be leaving Sri Lanka for good. I said, “That’s excellent for promoting the show! No need to lie to your fans, but please keep them guessing. That way we can make your show one of the biggest.” And that’s what happened.

For this show we also included a snack pack and a beverage per ticket holder for the intermission, and doubled the price of the ticket to Rs. 200 (which was a good price for a show in 1987). In spite of having a full banquet hall of over 1,000 seats pre-sold, just before the start of the show, our banquet team had to arrange an additional 200 seats just outside the hall. We kept the ballroom doors open. I arranged the kitchen to increase the quantity of snacks. I requested the Food & Beverage Controller to print extra tickets and to sell those at the entrance to the last-minute fans who were eagerly waiting outside the hotel with the hope of getting their final glimpse of their favourite musicians, prior to them leaving Sri Lanka.

A couple of months later I read in local newspapers that one of the hotel musicians and the most recognizable TV Anchor of Sri Lanka, Noeline Honter, had recently won a few important awards for her contribution to the entertainment and broadcasting industries. I immediately called Kenneth Honter, Noeline’s manager and husband, with an idea for a felicitation show to celebrate the multi-faceted achievements of this remarkable lady

Kenneth was a marketer and ad agent, so I did not have to persuade him. We immediately planned the show together. We themed my third stage show as the producer, ‘Noeline… a Celebration’. I produced it and Kenneth worked as the stage manager. After that we collaborated in the same roles for several other shows till I left Sri Lanka for good in 1994. ‘Noeline… a Celebration’ was equally successful as ‘A Farewell to Priyanthi & Raja’. Both shows had a line-up of performers who were the best of the best in Sri Lanka in the western music scene.

The day after Noeline’s show, November 16, 1987, Colombo 2000 broke its previous record for a Monday (the slowest day of the week). The trick was, a ‘Star Party’ we quickly organized for all musicians who performed at the show a day before. We placed a small newspaper ad with one line: “Meet the Stars of Noeline’s Show, at COLOMBO 2000 Tonight!”. The fans stormed Colombo 2000 to listen to the singing of over 20 stars and mingle with them.

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