How a former bellhop went on to run the No 5 hotel on The World’s 50 Best Hotels 2024, The Upper House in Hong Kong

Both sides of my family have lived in Hong Kong for multiple generations, with my children the fourth generation born here. I have an 89-year-old grandmother living in Repulse Bay, who now has 13 great-grandchildren aged between one and 10, all living in Hong Kong. My parents met when my mother was 17 years old, and were married the day after her 19th birthday. They had their wedding at The Verandah in Repulse Bay, where my husband and I also got married.

Everyone welcome

I feel extremely lucky to have grown up in Hong Kong, and that’s why we have made the decision to stay and raise our children here. I grew up not thinking about the colour of someone’s skin or religion because of the open-minded household and society I was raised in. We got to choose how much we swayed towards our Hindu roots or our Christian roots; as children we celebrated Diwali, Christmas and Chinese New Year. It’s a privilege to grow up in a multicultural society, and doing so enables me to engage in my job as a hotelier with people from all over the world very naturally.

Friends forever

As a child I was obsessed with Enid Blyton books like Malory Towers and The Twins at St Clare’s, so it was exciting for me to transfer to Wycombe Abbey, an all-girls boarding school in the UK. I went there with my head filled with images of lacrosse and midnight feasts, and that was my reality from age 11 until I went to Bristol University. I met my six best friends at boarding school and we are still close 35 years on. Having long-standing relationships are important to me and my family. I saw the way my mom, who is a role model for me, looked after her relationships and friendships, and saw the positive effects that come from it.

Picking a path

I did catering jobs when I was at boarding school, from the age of 14, as a friend’s mum owned a catering company in Henley (England). My first official job was when I was 16, at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, working in the food and beverage department, which is not my forte. Traditionally, in hotels you choose a path; rooms or F&B. I’ve gone down the rooms path.

Opening doors

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of being at my grandfather’s men’s suiting shop inside the old Hilton Hotel, which is now the Cheung Kong Center. It was such an exciting atmosphere for me and my brothers, though I remember being intimidated by the doorman, who was a tall Sikh gentleman. Ironically, while I was learning my trade as a hotelier at the Grand Hyatt, I spent six months essentially doing the same job, opening and closing the doors as a bellhop. In the hotel trade, you go through all of the foundational steps to really learn the business.

Destiny calling

I knew I was destined to work in hotels at age 21 on my year abroad from Bristol University, when I did a seven-month internship at The Ritz-Carlton in Barcelona (Spain), which was called Hotel Arts. I was a guest-relations intern. A year after completing my undergraduate degree, I was doing my postgraduate diploma at EHL (École hôtelière de Lausanne) in Switzerland.

Mandarin mentor

My first job when I graduated from EHL was at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong. Mandarin Oriental had always been a brand that I wanted to work with, especially within Asia. I was the concierge manager there for two years before joining The Upper House. During my time at The Landmark Mandarin Oriental, I worked closely with the hotel manager. She was very generous to me, and was such an amazing mentor at that early point in my career as a female hotel manager, which there were very few of at the time.

The payoff

The best part of my job is the oppor­tunities you have to meet and serve people, to showcase our beautiful city, and show them our favourite parts of it. It does require hard work, time and patience, but if you really want to do it, then it’s worth seeing it through.

Balancing work-life

It’s definitely a lifestyle choice to become a hotelier and to have a young family at the same time. I’m blessed with the team I have at work and home who help me do both. My parents are very involved in our family life. I have an incredibly supportive husband, which creates balance for us as well. The beauty of Hong Kong is that we can achieve greater work-life balance and grow our careers as working mothers.

Hitting the trail

For me, downtime is getting out into nature, like going on a 25km trail run with my husband. On a Sunday lunchtime, after we put the boys down for a nap, we go out for two, three hours. That was one of our things when we were dating. We met at The Upper House when he was the director of F&B and I was the director of guest experience. We dated for six months in secret, and would go hiking out in the New Territories together. Since I stopped breastfeeding my one-year-old son, we have started racing again. I just did my first ultra-marathon with him last month, a 50km trail in the New Territories.

Body and soul

One of my favourite places is the Siu Ma Shan hiking trail, which has some of the best waterfalls. We live close by, so do it pretty much monthly with the kids. Sometimes we just go and put our feet in the water, which I find very cleansing and grounding. Aside from running, I do a lot of conditioning during the week, whether it’s Family Form, yoga or weight training at the gym.

Getting proactive

I have had digestive gut health issues since I was a child, and struggled with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome). I have a gluten intolerance and I’m coeliac. As a result, my immune system is quite compromised and I get sick often, which isn’t conducive to my job or long hours of travelling. After I finished breastfeeding, I wanted to get all of that under wraps, so I began seeing a nutritional therapist, Katia Demekhina, of the Integrated Medicine Institute. We had a wellness talk in the hotel in the middle of last year and she was one of the panellists. She was not of the mindset that you need to cut out X, Y, Z, but “what can I add, what can I change?” I’ve found her holistic and often spiritual approach very conducive to my life as a mummy, a runner and a hotel manager. I was a vegetarian for most of my adult life, but I’ve switched to being pescatarian in order to get more protein and calcium.

Making every minute count

My day starts at 6am. I get the boys up and ready for school, put them on the bus at 6:45am and then go for my run, which is my hour of me time. Then I come back, get the third one, who just started five days in pre-kindergarten, ready and drop him at school, then go to work and do my make-up in the car. I have to make my time really count – one way I do this is each Sunday night I get out every single outfit and accessories for the week, day and night, if I have evening events. I get all my gym clothes the night before so that they’re ready to go.

Breaking a sweat

I maximise my time to make life as efficient as possible, but if I’m feeling burned out, I communicate to my support system – my husband, parents, brothers and my home team – to get the extra boost I need. I’ve done a lot of work on myself through my spiritual journey, something I’ve leaned into since I •was a teenager. I have my guru, my reiki master, who I see once a month. I do meditation. Exercise is a key thing for me. If I’m feeling in a funk I know I need to go sweat. My husband also knows this, so he will encourage me and say, “I think you need to go for a run.”

Betty Richardson