This Subic Hotel Is Run by Staff in Their 20s and 30s
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Check into Le Charme Suites in Subic and there’s more than a good chance that either Beverly Lim or Leeray Alop will greet you at the lobby. Lim is the hotel’s duty manager and Alop is the hotel manager. There’s nothing inherently special about that—hotel staff are trained to render good customer service as soon as you step through their doors—but what is interesting is that both Lim and Alop, who are both senior members of the hotel’s operations team, are only in their 20s.
Lim is 24 years old, while Alop is 29. Both have been with the company for at least four years. Lim even started as an on-the-job trainee before she was hired full time. Alop, meanwhile, had been working at another hotel as a night auditor before he moved to Le Charme.
Hotel manager Leeray Alop
Duty manager Beverly Lim
Day-to-day operations
“I applied for a supervisor position with the front office (here at Le Charme),” he says. “Eventually I was (moved up) to duty manager.”
In the fourth quarter of 2018, the hotel manager abruptly resigned and, at 26 years old, Alop took over. As most people who work in hospitality would know, the last few months of the year is always peak season for the industry, so it was a baptism of fire of sorts for the young executive.
The hotel's swimming pool has gorgeous views of the surrounding landscapes
“I can say I was really stressed out at the time. But eventually I was able to overcome it and do the job, with the help of other staff, like Beverly.”
As hotel manager and duty manager, Alop and Lim are in charge of day-to-day operations of Le Charme, making sure guests’ needs are taken care of and that everything runs smoothly. The 45-room hotel is located just a few minutes after the SCTEX toll plaza, right beside the Royal Duty Free Shop. Opened in 2016, Le Charme has a pretty nondescript exterior, but offers bigger-than-usual rooms stacked with premium furnishings and accoutrements. The swimming pool is on the topmost floor, with gorgeous views of surrounding hills and the Subic landscapes.
The hotel's cozy lobby
“What we try to do, at least from a management perspective, is identify candidates where we can pass on what we’ve learned and see if they have the capacity,” says Lee Bagona, COO of the hotel. “We want to be able to see if we can turn over that responsibility to them. Yes, they’re young, but if they show that capacity, then that’s a plus for us.”
“They’re also very well-versed on the digital marketing side,” he adds. “Social media, all that stuff. That’s where they really help out.”
Josephine Floresca, who is the CEO and managing director of Le Charme, says that the average age of the roughly 60-person hotel staff is “below 30.”
“There’s that old saying that ‘you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, and I think that holds true for us,” she says. “So that’s why we really hire young. Even Diane (Frias), our executive chef, she’s only 31. But she’s been with us since 2015, when she started out as a pastry chef.”
Surviving the pandemic
Like many other hotels and hospitality establishments, Le Charme wasn’t spared by the harsh effects of the pandemic. In fact, the hotel has the dubious honor of having the first suspected PUI (patient under investigation) at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic early in 2020.
“We got special mention during the first meeting with the SBMA (Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority) chair of all the locators in the area,” Floresca says.
“So yung ‘spotlight,’ nasa ‘min agad,” Bagona adds. “But we were able to keep the guests pacified. At the same time, we cooperated with government officials and coordinated with them without raising any more alarms.
“And since mga bata nga yung staff, they weren’t jaded,” he adds. “They handled it very well.”
The hotel has 45 well-appointed rooms
Today the hotel is slowly recovering from the dark days of the pandemic. Guests are slowly coming back to Subic and choosing to stay at Le Charme, which is advocating LOHAS—or lifestyle of health and sustainability. The hotel has a spa and a fitness center, uses solar panels that provides about 20 percent of its electricity needs, and invested in an aquaponics system to grow its own herbs and vegetables that it uses in its dishes.
It might still take a while before guests start flocking back to Le Charme in numbers like that before the pandemic, but when they do, the hotel’s young staff led by Lim and Alop will be there to welcome them.
