Flowers are nice, but running hotels is nicer. “My parents still question why I got involved in hospitality,” says Rudolf van Dijk, opening general manager of Four Seasons Hotel Hangzhou at West Lake, with a satisfied laugh. “My father hoped I’d join his flower business, but I just couldn’t see getting up every day to harvest blossoms for auction.”

What appealed instead was toiling late into the night in restaurants. Though his earliest aspiration was to be a chef, it took van Dijk only a few months in the kitchen to realize that he was better suited for the front of the house. Following hotel school, he managed four restaurants in The Netherlands, and each was awarded a Michelin star on his watch. In addition to the realisation that achieving two stars would have been “a daunting task,” the job taught him the lasting values of frugality, persistence and communicating confidently with guests and staff. “I learned early on that you can’t manage from behind your desk.”

After an initial posting in New York, van Dijk worked his way up the Four Seasons management ladder in Asia, with stops in China, Thailand, Japan and Singapore. In his new position, he has the pleasure of getting a singular address off the ground. The two-storey, multi-building property is a standout where high-rise hotels are the rule, he notes. “And the beauty of our lakeside location is just amazing.”

With the Asian tradition of exemplary service already mirroring the attentiveness and sincerity for which Four Seasons is renowned, van Dijk’s focus has been on heightening the guest experience throughout the entire stay, a novel approach to hospitality in China. Among many areas he has addressed is getting the front-line staff well tutored in English. The effort has paid off handsomely, just as it did when he was Hotel manager of Four Seasons Hotel Shanghai and insisted on hiring three English tutors to teach Australian, American and British dialects to the staff.

Though busy with the opening, van Dijk maintains an active lifestyle and has a passion for endurance sports. An avid cyclist, he recently abandoned his road bike after local thoroughfares riddled with “humps and bumps” had him fixing flat after flat. Now, he spends hours on Sundays “getting down and dirty,” mountain biking with a cycling buddy.

The clientele of the new Hangzhou property will doubtlessly be impressed: “Guests like to see you sweat,” he says of the intensity he brings to the bike trail and the Hotel floor. “When they see you’re into it, they are, too.”