Warwick Gunning

Director of sales and marketing for the Sheraton Warsaw Hotel & Towers
By : Robert Wylot

   New Zealander Warwick Gunning, 40, first left his native country for Canberra, Australia when he was 18 years old. For a while he was employed as the manager of a club in the Australian capital, but left when he felt that he’d gone as far as he could. “I was the youngest manager in Canberra but I couldn’t go any further in the business,” he said. “The only way for my career to grow was to join an international company.” So in 1986 he joined the Sheraton chain and has remained with the company for 15 years.

   In 1995, he arrived in Poland to take up a job as sales and marketing manager of the new Sheraton Warsaw Hotel & Towers. He admits that what attracted him to the job was the challenge to successfully open a new hotel in a new market – and a chance to live in Europe.

   In 1997, Gunning was promoted to director of sales and marketing for Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia, and his responsibilities are set to grow further when Sheraton completes its second hotel, Westin Warsaw, in two years.

   Although he calls hospitality management a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, he still gets a kick out of it because of the job’s central features – travel and leisure. He said he’s now traveled almost everywhere in Europe and worked with young, dynamic individuals. “It’s a fun industry,” he said. His greatest challenge in Poland is the language and he rates his ability as “still lousy after five years.”

   Past notes:

   1986 – Joined Sheraton in Perth, Australia

   1993 – Transferred to Sheraton’s global sales offices in Sydney

   1995 – Diploma in hospitality management from the Bond University in Sydney

   1995 – Came to Poland as Sheraton’s sales and marketing manager

   1997 – Promoted to area director of sales and marketing for Poland, Bulgaria and Croatia

   Word of advice:

   “Never enter this industry to make money. It rewards you with travel and meeting people. Enter it for fun and for its future.”

   Marek Rajski

   General Manager of the

   Forum Hotel

   Marek Rajski’s career in the hotel industry is an American success story that started on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

   When Rajski left Poland in 1978 with a master’s degree in law, he began as a concierge in a Toronto-based hotel and made himself popular with the guests by fixing problems such as supplying them with last-minute concert tickets. By 1992, he had risen to a post in the central reservations bureau in Toronto and was then offered a two-year contract to become the sales and reservations manager at a hotel on the Caribbean island of Antigua.

   After another two years in Toronto as Primrose Hotel’s sales manager, he again jetted off to a group of three hotels in the Caribbean to work as marketing and sales manager.

   He arrived in Poland in 1997 initially to visit his family, but the visit turned into a permanent stay when he was offered a job as sales manager at Sheraton Warsaw Hotel & Towers.

   He then moved to the Holiday Inn and to the Forum Hotel, becoming the Forum’s deputy general manager. He became general manager of the hotel on Jan. 1 of this year.

   Past notes:

   1977 – Graduated with a master’s degree in law from Warsaw University

   1978 – Left for Canada

   1979 – Joined the Four Seasons hotel chain

   1992 – Went to Antigua as sales and reservations manager at Club Antigua Hotel

   1994 – Became sales manager at the Primrose Hotel in Toronto

   1996 – Appointed sales and marketing manager at three hotels in the Caribbean

   1997 – Returned to Warsaw as sales manager at the Sheraton Warsaw Hotel & Towers

   1998 – Became room division manager at the Holiday Inn in Warsaw

   1999 – Promoted to deputy general manager of the Forum Hotel in Warsaw

   2001 – Became general manager of the Forum Hotel

   Word of advice:

   “In this industry you must like people, be tolerant and at the same time think realistically. A person that doesn’t like people will fail.”