By V. Sivaji
For Zafeer Majid, coming home to Penang is not simply about taking on a new job. In many ways, a return to where it all began, after a career that has taken him from the skies to hotel restaurants, bars and banquet rooms across Malaysia.
The Penang-born hospitality professional is the new Cluster Director of Food & Beverage for Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa and Golden Sands Resort in Batu Ferringhi.
And he describes the move simply as a “happy homecoming.”
But the road that brought him back to Penang was anything but straightforward. Long before he was overseeing food and beverage operations at hotels, Zafeer was working as cabin crew.
The experience of working in aviation gave him his first grounding in hospitality, serving people from different backgrounds, adapting quickly to changing situations and learning that small gestures can make a difference to a guest’s experience.
Yet eventually, he decided to leave the skies and move into hotel food and beverage. It was a leap into unfamiliar territory.
Moving from an aircraft cabin to the hotel industry meant learning a new business from the ground up. There were new systems, new operations and a completely different understanding of what it takes to deliver a dining experience.
For Zafeer, it also meant being prepared to start again. That willingness to learn and reinvent himself would become a recurring theme in his career.
(Zafeer (right) with Michael Farag of Penang Marriott Hotel at the recent Alleycats Tribute Night at Shangri-La Golden Sands)
His hotel journey included Four Points by Sheraton Penang, followed by stints at Four Points by Sheraton Puchong, Palm Garden Hotel Putrajaya and Four Points by Sheraton Kuala Lumpur Chinatown.
Along the way, he moved through different cities, teams and operations, accumulating the kind of experience that cannot be learnt from a textbook.
Earlier this year, he marked the end of a five-year chapter with Marriott. But rather than seeing each move simply as another rung on the career ladder, Zafeer appears to place considerable value on the people he met along the way.
That emphasis on people is perhaps unsurprising for someone whose own career began with serving passengers in the confined space of an aircraft cabin.
He has also taken an interest in helping others make career transitions of their own. Among them was a former Malaysia Airlines cabin crew member whom he helped navigate the move into hotel food and beverage, eventually progressing into a bar management role.
It is a full-circle reminder of Zafeer’s own journey, someone who once had to make the leap himself and now has the opportunity to help others do the same.
Now back in Penang, his challenge is different. He returns not as the young hospitality professional who once left home, but as a seasoned F&B leader bringing experiences gathered from different hotels and different parts of the country.
For a state whose identity is so closely intertwined with food, dining and hospitality, the F&B profession here is more than an industry. It is part of the culture and character of the place.
There is also something fitting about coming home to a place famous for its food after spending years learning the business of hospitality elsewhere.
The boy from Penang has travelled. He has changed industries, started over, learnt new trades, built teams and formed friendships along the way.
Now he is back where his story began, this time with the responsibility of helping shape the experience of guests arriving in Penang.
For someone whose career once began at 36,000 feet, the journey has finally brought him home.
For this, we at Penang Hyperlocal congratulate Zafeer and wish him well in his new posting.