[Faculty of Business Administration] On Tuesday, November 5th, we had a lecture from Misako Matsui, General Manager of Umekoji Potel Kyoto, in the Service Management class.

Assistant Professor Mizuyo Tonosaki of Faculty of Business Administration teaches "Service Management" by inviting guest speakers from the business world involved in the restaurant and hotel management industries to deepen students' understanding by listening to specific examples and the voices of those involved. In the second lecture, Misako Matsui, General Manager of Umekoji Potel, spoke about hotel management and her own career.
Ms. Matsui joined Recruit Co., Ltd. after graduating from university. After working there for three years, she left the company when she got married and became a full-time housewife. As per her original plan, once she was done raising her children, she returned to Recruit and worked in sales for Jalan, a travel information website edited by the company. She then made use of the experience she gained from interacting with many hotel and inn managers during her time in sales at Jalan, and after serving as an executive at a Keihan hotel, she is now the general manager of Umekoji Potel Kyoto. She believes that "all experience is a career," not just her professional experience, such as setting up a bazaar at a children's facility during her time as a full-time housewife.
Matsui is passionate about "matching," which effectively connects the information that companies have with the needs of people. In the hotel industry, too, he wants to make it possible to see what each party wants and what they want, and match the needs of "I want to stay at this kind of accommodation" with the hotels that think "I want this kind of person to stay at my hotel."
The "potel" in Umekoji Potel Kyoto is a combination of "port," which is derived from the word for an entrance and exit for goods and culture, and "hotel." While being rooted in the local community, the hotel aims to be a gateway for exchange between people from Japan and overseas, and the "゜" added to "hotel" is a name that is conscious of the "goen (connection)" that connects various things. The hotel's unique feature is that the hotel management company does not produce the entire facility, but rather various curators (professionals who plan and manage the facility) participate and cooperate to create the common areas. For example, they created a public bathhouse in the style of a public bathhouse (Umekoji Public Bath "Poteyu"), a space where you can play board games or have children play freely, a space where you can read books and enjoy free drinks, and other spaces that would normally be used as guest rooms to generate profits. By making these spaces, they are able to take advantage of the advantages of a mid-sized hotel and differentiate themselves from small hotels (such as guesthouses) and large hotels.
At the end of the class, the students were asked to give a group presentation on either "A transformation plan for Umekoji Potel Kyoto" or "What if everyone could use the hotel freely for a day?" I'm looking forward to seeing the students' presentations based on today's lecture.

(Source: School Public Relations)