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.

Service Style
Procedures aside, it’s the service generally at Missoni that Gadet is most proud of. With the hotel subject to a series of delays, the GM had two years to recruit his team.

“I was the first on board two and half years ago and I carefully recruited. I had my core team with me from the earlier stage and we built from there. We didn’t get rid of anybody. My whole management team has been with me from the very beginning,” says Gadet.

“We have utilised the time to look at the details on service delivery and look at the hotel from much more of a holistic point of view than a design point of view.

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So we had regular meetings with our teams from head office, regional office and Missoni and we shared ideas and bounced ideas off of each other. I think that was worthwhile,” he adds.

Together they went on recruitment trips to Rome and Milan and hand-picked the staff, 50 of whom are from Italy. The training that followed was “very thorough but natural”, explains Gadet, highlighting a programme called the Universal Concierge.

“This is based on the Trivial Pursuit knowledge game,” he says. “We made
six sections, each representing a category that we think it is important for staff to know something of.

“It’s often F&B that’s the difficult one: what are your opening hours, do you have something for kids etc? If you go to many hotels and ask anybody these questions, if they’re not working in that restaurant they don’t know. They’ll refer you to front desk.

“We created about 800 cards that are constantly updated; other topics include Rezidor, Middle East, and cultural behaviour. We’ve launched it online now, so in our development centre (training room) the staff play games with each other.

In the daily briefings in the outlets we play 10 minutes of the physical game. The goal is for any member of staff to be able to answer a relevant question. For example, can you tell me where is the best hairdresser in Kuwait, or whereabouts can I get the best Chinese food?”

As a result, like the traditional procedures, Missoni has done away with the traditional concierge desk.

“This is our version of concierge — everyone becomes the concierge so to speak,” says Gadet.