Veteran hotelier steps down after long and illustrious career
A few years after the iconic Bentota Beach Hotel is constructed, a young man armed with a Canadian post-graduate tourism diploma is appointed as its assistant manager.
Ten days into the job, the 24 year- old is thrown into the deep end and asked to take over when the general manager steps down. “I was young, a rookie,” recalleds, who retired from the hotel industry last week ending a 40- year old career, stepping down as a Director/ Executive Consultant at Aitken Spence Hotels as his last posting.
One of the first foreign trained tourism managers who saw the rapid transformation of the industry from the 1970s to post- war 2014, Hapugoda was the long-time general manager of Bentota Beach when it was owned by Whittall Boustead- controlled Ceylon Holiday Resorts and later when it came under John Keells (JK).
In the 1990s, after five years under JK, Hapugoda ventured out on his own to set up a successful Ayurveda resort at Bentota. In 2004, he exited the business and joined Aitken Spence Hotels as its Managing Director. The 10- year spell there saw him drive the business to new levels with the company securing management contracts in India and Oman while enhancing its Maldives operations.
Recalls former JK Group Chairman Ken Balendra under whose watch Bentota Beach was acquired by JK: “Right from the word go, Malin was a doer and outstanding throughout his career. Very knowledgeable in tourism, he moved to Aitken Spence and did a sterling job there too and is a good role model for others in the trade”
Hapugoda’s beginning was in Baddegama where his father was the Principal of Christ Church College but when seven years he joined St. Thomas College, Mount Lavinia.
“Every school vacation was spent in the village. My father in fact wanted me to go to a village school but my mother ( who grew up in Pussellawa and studied at Bishops) saw the value of a good education and was persuasive enough to send my brothers and our sister to Colombo schools.”
The experience of village life and interaction helped him in the relationship between the village and Bentota Beach, and later to deal with the troubled times of the 1988 JVP insurrection when the hotel industry came to a grinding halt for a few months. “Remember hotels at the time were all outside Colombo, in remote areas and conflict with the village, if we didn’t get along, was greater.”
Completing the O level stream, Hapugoda was not too interested in further studies. While most of his school mates, who eventually ended up in law, medicine, public service or the planting profession, continued with their higher studies, Hapugoda spotted a newspaper advertisement seeking students for the second intake to the Ceylon Hotel School, then housed at the current Taj Samudra premises. “My father, who wanted me to do something better, objected but was convinced by my mother to give his consent to follow this course,” Hapugoda said, recalling that within three months into the course, “I was bored with washing pans an cutlery and was seeking an escape route”. Canada bound
Nevertheless, three years later he got his degree in the company of two others, who became prominent hoteliers, Paddy Withana and U. C. Jayasinghe (both serving at Bentota Beach).
Hapugoda then took off to Canada to undergo a post graduate diploma in hotel restaurant and industrial catering at the Ryerson Institute of Technology. On his return in 1973, he joined Bentota Beach, became the youngest General Manager of a hotel and the rest is history.
Bentota was the first, organised tourism resort with land acquired by the state at a time when J. R. Jayewardene was the Minister of State in charge of tourism with Anandatissa de Alwis as his dynamic Permanent Secretary.
The architect Geofrey Bawa-designed Bentota Beach was the first property at Bentota followed by Asker Moosajee’s Hotel Serendib and Ceylon Hotels Corporation’s Hotel Lihiniya Surf.
“A few months after joining the hotel, Whittalls Chairman ( M) Coomaraswamy wanted me to take over from the then manager, Fred de Saram (father of Srimani Athulathmudali). I was lucky to get this opportunity as there were no experienced people at the time.”
Hapugoda’s village roots helped to defuse many a situation in his hotel career including life- threatening moments during the 1983 riots.
“We didn’t have mobiles at the time and most land lines were dead when anti-Tamil riots exploded in 1983. I told our Tamil staff, who were boarded in village homes near the hotel, that if