Hilal Saade says Hotel Missoni is helping establish Kuwait as a place for leisure as well as for business. Hilal Saade says Hotel Missoni is helping establish Kuwait as a place for leisure as well as for business.

Hilal Saadé, director of sales and marketing at the brand new Hotel Missoni Kuwait, tells Louise Oakley how the dazzling property is helping to place Kuwait on the luxury traveller’s radar.

This is the first Missoni Hotel to open in the Middle East. What are your plans and strategies to market the brand — are you taking a different approach?
Yes definitely. Our concept is new; it’s all-inclusive. We know that Kuwait is not a leisure market, it’s a business market.

So why all-inclusive? Why, because what’s the most frustrating thing when you travel? It’s when you go to the receptionist to check out and they ask ‘did you have anything from the mini bar?’ Whether you say yes or no, they will still call their colleague to check your room and then you will feel embarrassed — as if you are lying.

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The concept of Hotel Missoni is to make it simple and to make it easy for people to enjoy their stay, without making it complicated. So at Hotel Missoni you have the mini bar, laundry, internet, airport pick-up and breakfast included in the room rate, plus good food, a great atmosphere and friendly staff.

How are you communicating this to the market?
We are the only hotel here attending most of the international trade events like ILTM in Cannes, ITB, ATM, GIBTM and one in Barcelona, EIBTM. We also attended the Pure Life show in Marrakech. It’s focused on hotels that can provide an experience.

How are you working with travel agents?
They are of course important. We are not only focusing on business travellers. We are also focusing on the leisure market. We are creating the demand here.

We have a Six Senses spa, we have the mall coming, a businessman can bring his wife here. We provide the whole package.

Kuwait is a corporate destination but we are creating the luxury destination and the leisure destination. It’s the only luxury hotel in town and it’s the newest.

Have you tied up with any trade partners?
Yes, XO Private Collection, Kiwi Collection, JG Black Book — they are helping us a lot in the international market and especially in the US. JG Black Book is affiliated with Virtuoso [US luxury travel specialists] and a lot of big tour operators in the US market.

What about sales? What are your online targets?
The targeted online business so far is 35%. But as a new brand in the Middle East as well as a new hotel in Kuwait, our strategy is to first position the hotel for the niche market, volume will come later. Seeing is believing.

Have you noticed any trends in terms of who is booking the property so far?
We were expecting leisure people but not this amount of luxury leisure travellers. We know this from the number of suites we are selling at the weekend. We are targeting royal families, Missoni fans, females, the European market and the GCC market for tour operators. We will have Virtuoso from the US as well.

What is your online strategy?
We all that the trend, even in the Arab world, is for online bookings. We even receive bookings online from prominent families in Kuwait. People are shifting to the internet now through Facebook and Twitter. The bloggers in Kuwait are very strong.

We started a blogger outreach campaign — it’s a huge thing here in the Kuwait market. We’ve treated them the same as we would print media and have been very specific and approached them individually.

For Facebook we’ve released exclusive photos on here first. Rosita Missoni took her own photos that were only released on social media. We’ve got several exclusive elements and have really tried to get the community involved and targeted reposting, which has taken it wider and wider.

How do you think the average businessman perceives Hotel Missoni?
They love it. All businessmen need a nice mattress, a healthy meal, a pleasant environment and a good laundry to press their suits.

When travelling, especially six hours from Europe, the first thing they want to do is press their suit, so we make it free for them to do that here.