Pascal Gadet shares a joke with the management team, all of whom have been working at Hotel Missoni Kuwait for two years. Pascal Gadet shares a joke with the management team, all of whom have been working at Hotel Missoni Kuwait for two years.

Genuine and Generous
The main goal at Missoni, explains Gadet, is to offer genuine and generous service. After all, with its unique design — created by Rosita Missoni in partnership with the interior architect for Missoni Kuwait, Matteo Thun — guests are expecting something different.

A core element of this is the all-encompassing room rate — which includes airport pick-up, laundry, in-room breakfast, mini bar consumption, local newspapers and Wi-Fi.

“It’s an all-inclusive concept,” explains Gadet. “We combine the generous approach with the genuine approach. Let’s say you come to Kuwait, we all know it’s 40-50% occupancy in town, and you want a late check-out.

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Imagine we say your room is booked, but then we speak to the manager and you can stay for two hours more at a price. We don’t go into this business.

We don’t lock you out at 12 noon so you have to go back to reception and negotiate. We try to make it easy; if we can give it to you we do, that’s where the generous part comes in — we don’t need to make an extra buck.

“The all-inclusive concept has the same philosophy behind it; it’s designed to make your stay seamless, like the design. It’s about having less procedures.

You get the mini bar included so we don’t have to ask you what you had at check-out. How annoying is that as a guest? We include unlimited laundry, we have an all-singing, all-dancing laundry in house,” says Gadet.

“We include the usual suspects like airport pick-up, although that’s in the Maserati. We include newspapers, local phone calls, breakfast — that’s an interesting one.

As traditional hoteliers, we decide how you are supposed to enjoy yourself because we want you to come to the main restaurant. That’s why we charge tray charge for the room service.

And we definitely want you to come for breakfast because we’ve filled up all these chaffing dishes with a lot of food and if you don’t come to eat there, that’s a waste,” says Gadet, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

“If you order breakfast in-room that means extra cost even if your rate includes breakfast. We don’t do any of that,” he says.

“There’s no tray charge and you can have breakfast in your room anytime. You chose us for the luxury experience, you love your room, you may want to spend some time in your room. With the traditional approach, we actually chase you out of your room. But at Missoni, we want you to enjoy wherever you are in the hotel,” he explains.

I wonder if this causes operations a headache, but Gadet says no — because the room service department is geared up for that.

And, at breakfast in the restaurant, Cucina, there is a modest buffet offering with all hot dishes cooked à la minute, avoiding the problem of wastage.

The housekeeping department is also set differently, continues Gadet.

“We’re off our trolley,” he says, referring to the abandonment of the traditional housekeeping trolleys in favour of sleek housekeeping bags.

“Do you ever enjoy coming out of a room and seeing the neighbour’s trolley with the empty bin contents on the side? These are the things that as traditional hoteliers we kind of almost enforce upon you. [The attitude is] ‘these are the procedures and you have to follow them,” explains Gadet.