When I was still working for Marco Polo Hotels in Hong Kong, often I would go from my office to one of the hotels in the Ocean Centre complex for lunch. On the way back I would always go through the Ocean Centre Shopping Arcade which joined the properties, and from there the route was to turn left into the Hong Kong Hotel where my office was located.
On this particular day however, as I approached the entrance to the Hong Kong Hotel, I felt that instead of turning left and going straight into the hotel, I should be turning right and going into the Ocean Terminal area, which was on the harbor front, where the cruise ships docked. There was no real reason to do this as it added an extra five minutes to the walk, it also meant that I would have to go one floor down by escalator and then one floor back up by stairs to reach the elevators to my office. However, somehow I felt it was the right thing to do.
As I was riding down the escalator near the harbor front where the cruise ships came in, I saw, standing at the bottom was Harry and Judi Mullikin, my previous boss when he was President of Westin Hotels & Resorts, and his wife. They looked up, saw me and exclaimed, “We just got off a cruise ship and were looking for a telephone to see if we could find you and tell you we were here, as we weren’t sure where in Hong Kong you were.”
I said, “I guess I got the message!
It must have been the Universal Extranet working!
Read more about the Universal Extranet in my upcoming book...
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