Richard Kimenyi tried retirement. Then he tried consultancy. Neither felt suitable for him. And so, nine years ago, he stepped out of retirement. At 77, Kimenyi has no plans to leave the stage.
The stage, in his case, is the hotel business, where he has spent more than five decades and still prefers the demands of day-to-day management to sitting in a boardroom. He likens hoteliers to rock stars: “Good hoteliers are like rock stars,” he says.
Today, he is the country manager for Hemingways Collection in Rwanda, overseeing the Hemingways Retreat Kigali – a boutique hotel – among other businesses.
“When I retired from Fairmont [in 2015], I wanted to do consulting,” he says. “But for me, consulting is to get involved and see how the organisation is being run. I’m a hands-on person.”
Very few of his peers remain in active management, particularly in the corporate world, rather than dispensing advice from the boardroom.
“They might be doing consulting,” he says of some of the contemporaries that have, like him, been in the hospitality industry since Jomo Kenyatta was president. “But for me, I enjoy it this way.”
Eye for detail
Age has done little to blunt his curiosity or his eye for detail. He still enjoys spotting what employees miss, pointing it out and, perhaps most importantly, watching a younger employee learn from it.
“If I see something, tomorrow I’ll come there and tell the staff, ‘I saw this.’ Some of them wonder how I see these things,” says Mr Kimenyi, whose Rwanda assignment came after he had spent more than eight years with Hemingways in Nairobi.
“This is my ninth month [in Kigali],” he says.
He recalls that in 2025, when the Hemingways CEO offered him a choice between Kigali and Watamu, his answer was immediate. “I didn’t even hesitate,” he recalls. “I’d heard about Kigali; the order and all that.”
Kimenyi joined the hospitality industry in the early 1970s after leaving the Prince of Wales School, now Nairobi School.
Hilton Hotel, then under the Block group of hotels, was recruiting 10 Kenyans for overseas training.
“I was fortunate to be one of those who were taken by the Hilton. I went to West Germany where they do training in a sort of polytechnic, and then they do practicals,” he says, adding that he later trained in Britain and Israel.
“My interest was always food and beverage,” he adds.
Upon his return to Kenya, he worked at various establishments owned by the Block group, among them Outspan, Tree Top and the New Stanley.
“At the New Stanley Hotel, I was the first Kenyan food and beverage manager,” he recalls, adding that the Block group also sent him to Lesotho, where he was in charge of food and beverage for their three hotels there.
Career-defining moment
When he returned to Kenya, he was posted to the Norfolk, which was another business under the Block group. The Norfolk would define his career.
“I came back to Norfolk, which I ran for 33 years,” he says.
At the end of his stint at the Norfolk in 2015, he considered himself retired. Between then and 2017, when he joined Hemingways, he briefly consulted with a local hotel chain.
“For over eight years, I’ve been with them [Hemingways Group],” he says. “I enjoyed running the Nairobi and Watamu hotels, and we even opened Eden [a luxury residence in Nairobi’s Karen Estate].”
His long career as a hotelier has taken him to many places and enabled him to meet many people.
“I’ve travelled nearly everywhere. When I was with Fairmont, I would go to world travel markets: the UK, Berlin, the US. About two years ago, I went [to sample] Gulf food with a chef. That’s where you go to see the new trends. That has really helped me a lot,” he says. “I have met very many people; people with influence.”
Brush with death
There have been a few brushes with death too, among them the December 1980 bombing of the Norfolk.
“I was in the main dining room when I just heard a blast. The next minute I saw myself on the floor. The white jacket I was wearing was ripped off,” he recalls. A colleague nearby, he says, was not so lucky and his remains could only be identified by his wedding ring.
He also survived the 1982 attempted coup, which saw massive bloodshed not too far from the Norfolk.
In his many years as a hotelier, he has come up with principles that he operates by. One of them is always embracing new ideas.
“You keep the traditions, but come up with timely innovations,” he says. “I’ve made Google my friend. I even tell the [staff], ‘Let Google be your friend.’ You can learn a lot.”
He rejects the stereotype that older managers cannot work with younger employees.
“To me”, he says, “Gen Z is what we were during our time. We were the Gen Zs of our time — from fashion to career orientation. They’re go-getters, and that’s something I really enjoy.”
Hotels poach staff he has trained, but he treats the departures as proof of progress.
“I'm proud because they may get a bigger position and more money. When they move, they open another avenue for somebody else to come and learn with us,” he says, adding that his formula is simple: “You empower them and instil integrity, teamwork and respect.”
When it comes to retaining staff, he says little matters more than how people are treated. “The first thing I always look at is staff facilities: where they are changing, uniforms and, above all, meals,” he says. “We give them very good food. You invest in people.”
Hungry staff, he adds, will “casual eat” in the course of work.
“You get casual eating if the people are hungry, and it happens a lot,” he says. “You need to take care of your staff first. They’re human like you. Treat them the way you’d like to be treated.”
Building the Kigali brand
In Kigali, Mr Kimenyi is trying to blend Kenyan hospitality experience with a Rwandan team’s appetite to learn.
“We are not coming here to teach them; we work with them,” he says. “And we are not here forever.”
For expatriate CEOs, one of the early challenges of launching a new business is deciding whom to bring along to get it off the ground while building a local workforce capable of taking over.
When Mr Kimenyi was posted to Rwanda, he picked a small team from Nairobi in food and beverage, housekeeping, front office and the kitchen, while grooming local managers to take over.
“These young people follow the standard operating procedures,” he says. “They are eager to learn.”
To Mr Kimenyi, one is never too old to be involved in day-to-day operations in the industry.
“Good hoteliers are like rock stars,” he says. “You can see a rock star like Mick Jagger. He’s 82 and doing his world tour and the concerts are full. So, you’ve got to keep on rocking. We are like rock stars: you rock until you drop. But I enjoy it.”
