Make way for Missoni

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

The Kuwait Market
Delays also gave the Missoni team longer to understand the Kuwait market — one Gadet himself was already familiar with as the general manager of Radisson Kuwait, the sister hotel he previously managed in Kuwait for Rezidor before embarking on the Missoni project.

“Like in most destinations in the GCC there has been an enormous growth in Kuwait; it’s very well developed now. There are enormous malls that can compete with Dubai, the infrastructure is fantastic, basically you can almost get everything and anything in Kuwait,” says Gadet.

“In terms of hotels, you could say there’s an oversupply I suppose. I think that there are too many players playing in the same market in Kuwait now on all levels — three-, four- and five-star.

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“When we decided to come to Kuwait with this product we didn’t really want to play in the same league, we wanted to really do something different. We wanted to offer something unique and I think it was the right time to do that. I think Kuwait is now ready for something different. They’ve been waiting for a long time,” he says.

Gadet hopes that Missoni will help to change the perception of Kuwait as a purely business destination.

“In many ways we are pioneering; we are doing things for the first time here,” he says.

“People used to say to me ‘why Kuwait, it’s a business destination, nobody will ever come there for the weekend’ — but there are people coming for the weekend so where do they stay? The niche market, where can they stay? So we said we want to create a platform where that niche market feels at home.

“The government is talking about investing in leisure in a big way and it’s good; it’s what we need. I think it’s an underrated destination.
Kuwait doesn’t have to be boring, we have things to offer which are exciting and different. We have a Six Senses Spa, which will add to the leisure element.

We invite you to take your partner at no extra charge, so you may as a business traveller choose us more often or your partner may even want you to choose Kuwait because of it.

We have a mall attached, which adds another dimension to the experience. We have Giorgio Locatelli consulting on our restaurants. We have a lot of exciting things that are very new to Kuwait,” asserts Gadet.

He is realistic, however, accepting that the GCC affluent traveller is Missoni’s main target market, whether for business or leisure. Gadet adds that finding a niche market is all well and good, as long as you deliver upon your promises.

“We have our work cut out, but that’s what we wanted — we said we are going to do this and make a difference. We didn’t want to go into the mainstream market — all they do is undercut each other and that’s it.”

Hotel Missoni’s room rates are “basically comparable with the highest-rated hotel in Kuwait at the moment,” adds Gadet.

“Let’s look at value for money and, for this kind of money, I’m sure we can offer more and we will grow from there, rather than positioning ourselves sky-high rate-wise. I think the customer will appreciated that.

“It’s a bit like we are a Concorde looking down at all the Boeings and the Airbuses. We hold our own at that altitude. We do have to fight, but at least they are our battles. We don’t have to share them with everyone else,” says Gadet.

Ultimately, he takes a long-term look at Missoni’s place in the Kuwait hotel market.

“Luxury doesn’t come over night and here, it’s very much that you have to see it to believe it. What we are doing is delivering the most sexy experience to one of the most traditional markets.

In fact, who we are and what we do is just so mind-blowingly different from what people are used to, so the curiosity factor is enormous. It works for us. People just don’t believe that we have opened this beautiful property in Kuwait,” says Gadet.

Missoni’s ‘new luxury’ philosophy of being generous and not playing by traditional views, will generate its own returns, he adds.

“Being generous is just the way we see new luxury. Hoteliers have become too calculated in the luxury segment; we try to take your money on each turn of the journey. That’s where we said, ‘let’s cut all of this, let’s start again’. We want people to come back to the hotel, to tell their friends about it, and eventually the overall success will come.

It’s not short-term thinking, it’s really long-term,” he concludes.