Shangri-La Hotel’s Hui Kuok braves new world of social media to share stories on life, goals with staff, guests
- Harvard-educated Kuok created her Xiaohongshu account in 2021 during the pandemic after ‘debate within self’ on the good and bad of social media
- Kuok manages more than 42,000 people within its chain of 104 hotels worldwide
If there was one valuable lesson that Kuok Hui Kwong learned during the Covid-19 outbreak, it was the importance of telling a complete and authentic story to her audience.
Two factors compelled her to take the plunge. One was to communicate on a more casual platform with Shangri-La staff. The other was to give a glimpse of a human face to business decisions behind the hotel group founded in 1971 by her father Robert Kuok Hock-nien. Xiaohongshu, or little red book, is a 10-year old social network sometimes dubbed China’s answer to Instagram.
“I have always felt the power of social media, and we live in an age where we cannot ignore it,” said Kuok in an interview with the Post, which she managed as chief executive from January 2009 to June 2012. “Because so many of our hotels are so far away [from Hong Kong], I felt that if I didn’t at least try to put my narrative out there, you do not know who is saying what to whom about you or the headquarters.”
Kuok has been at the helm of Shangri-La since 2017, managing more than 25,000 staff in its portfolio of 104 hotels and resorts across four brands in 78 destinations worldwide. She had to balance that job with a family life as a wife and a mother. Her career path included a stint as an investment banking analyst at JPMorgan Chase.
