When asked what drew her to travel and tourism, Sun Wong gestures toward the view. From Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort’s newly opened Voyager 47 Club Lounge, you can see golden hour edge in over Diamond Head’s stately front and the iconic stretch of sand and sea at its feet. “It’s a beautiful place,” Wong says. “It makes me feel good about what I do.”

Wong’s passion for place is clear from the moment you meet her, and though she’s lived and traveled all over the world, there’s no doubt she belongs in Hawai‘i. Born in Seoul, Korea, raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and educated in Rome, Italy, Wong was no stranger to big moves when she met recruiters from Hawai‘i Pacific University and made the decision to move to Hawai‘i. “Hawai‘i sounded beautiful, and they offered me a scholarship so I could afford the tuition and board,” she says. “I first came here in 1993 and fell in love with the place. Basically never left.”

Wong was initially undecided about what to do for a career, but quickly found her calling in travel industry management. “What better thing to sell than what you love?” she says.

“I worked my way up,” Wong says of her early days working as a hotel housekeeper. “I started at Outrigger Maile Sky Court, now the Holiday Inn Express Waikiki. We used to clean 23 rooms a day.” From intern to housekeeper to vice president of marketing and guest acquisition, Wong has been with Outrigger Enterprises Group since the beginning of her career. At one point, she worked as a PBX operator, “back when you had to plug in the phones and manually schedule wake-up calls through the front desk.” Eventually she made her way into sales and marketing, seizing the opportunity to work with Outrigger in launching one of its Ohana branches.

Wong took a brief detour from Outrigger, working on the Orbitz.com startup team in Chicago. “They were just starting with the five major airlines and building the hotel program,” Wong says. “I think I was employee number three.” After Orbitz went public, Wong returned to Outrigger to revitalize and develop Waikiki Beach Walk before landing a role in Outrigger’s corporate office.

“A building is a building. What people want is the place.”

Wong has a strong understanding of the importance of culture and creating experiences, which she strives to impart on both her peers and customers at Outrigger. Outrigger’s corporate culture encourages mindfulness of three things: the people you work with, the people you serve and the destination.

A company tradition includes a monthly breakfast where Outrigger’s C-suites don chef hats and aprons and cook for their employees. “It’s taking care of the people you work with,” Wong says. “When you have happy employees, they turn around and take care of the customers.”

Wong also takes great care in creating a safe environment for ideas, mistakes and growth. “I’ve been really privileged to have had great leaders and bosses,” she says. “When you’ve been doing business for a while, sometimes you know when something’s not going to work. But you still create a space where your team can try their own ideas and learn from it. In my experience, one of the best things a leader can do is to see and trust your talent and help nurture it, and I hope I do that for my team.”

One of the most difficult ventures her team faced within the past 10 years is Outrigger’s expansion to international destinations. An avid traveler herself, it was a compelling challenge. And with its large variety of products, Outrigger’s expansion came with the ongoing challenge of finding the right product for the right customer. “Imagine being able to offer a romantic resort experience on Koh Samui to a couple going on their honeymoon and offering a different experience for a family vacation at another resort on the beach in Laguna, Phuket,” Wong says.

Another challenge Outrigger has faced head-on is cultivating immersive cultural experiences at every resort location. “Yes, we have resorts everywhere from Fiji to here in Waikiki,” Wong says. “But a building is a building. What people want is the place. If you come to Outrigger Beach or Outrigger Reef, you’ll see Hawai‘i in things everyday, from hula lessons to details in the décor. There’s meaning behind all of it. I think that’s why people choose Outrigger and why we’ve been around for seven decades.”

Wong recalls her honeymoon where she and her husband spent a week in Seoul and Hong Kong. “We asked around to find a good breakfast place and ended up in some hole-in-the-wall,” Wong says. “You would never know about it. There’s no indication of it online or on Yelp. But that’s the kind of experience people want and that Outrigger wants to provide.”

At the end of the day, Sun Wong is proud of the home she’s found in Hawai‘i and the job that allows her to share it with the world. “I have two beautiful boys. I wake up every morning to my baby, my youngest, giving me kisses. That kicks off my day, then I come into my office and get to spend time with team members who I’ve known for decades. They’re like family, too, and we’re doing work that we love and that makes people genuinely happy.”