Tanoa Group: Hard Work The Only Way For Mere Rakoroi
Ms Rakoroi was in the first batch of employees after Tanoa Group bought the hotel and knows every corner of the hotel.
Saturday 09 February 2019 | 15:24
Sometime in 2003, Tanoa Group of Hotels Executive Chairman Yanktesh Permal Reddy noticed this hardworking young woman at the Holiday Inn in Suva.
Immediately he approached and offered her employment at the Tanoa Plaza in Suva.
Mr Reddy’s experience in noticing this young woman, Mere Rakoroi, never went wrong.
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Four years later, she was appointed general manager of the Suva hotel, a position she still holds today.
Ms Rakoroi is one of eight finalists in the Tourism Leader category of the ANZ Fiji Excellence in Tourism Awards for next Saturday.
She has virtually climbed up through the ranks, including scrubbing toilet and bathroom floors to duty manager to her current position.
Ms Rakoroi is also the only female board member on the Fiji Rugby Union board.
She recalls: “I was working as a waitress at the Holiday Inn and he approached me and asked me to work for him, and I have never looked back since then.
“When I joined Tanoa Plaza in 2003 I remember we had to scrub the toilets and bathrooms of all the rooms and I used to carry around a small razor blade to scrape the grout.”
Ms Rakoroi was in the first batch of employees after Tanoa Group bought the hotel and knows every corner of the hotel.
Always at the forefront
Her staff at the hotel knows the willingness in Ms Rakoroi to always be at the forefront of her work and it is not unusual to find her at the roof of the hotel checking out the lift machines of checking the water pumps.
She started off in the front office and worked her way up to relieving duty manager, senior duty manager overlooking conferences, executive assistant manager and then general manager in 2007.
About nomination
“I am so blessed to be nominated in this category alongside some top industry leaders and it is humbling,” she says.
She was selected previously in 2007 in the former AON Tourism Awards for the Front Liner category which was won by Sophie Foster of the Shangri-La’s Fijian Resort and Spa.
In 2018 she was a finalist in the Emerging Tourism Leaders Award.
“To be selected with the rest of the finalists from the many tourism leaders we have in Fiji and overwhelming.
“All I can say is that nomination and where I am today is because of hard work, the willingness to always strive for the best and the guidance of one of the industry’s great, Mr Reddy.”
Feedback: charles.chambers@fijisun.com.fj
