Laurent Chaudet strikes a pose in front of Soda Box, Pullman's quirky, 1950s-inspired caf?. Laurent Chaudet strikes a pose in front of Soda Box, Pullman's quirky, 1950s-inspired caf?.

General manager Laurent Chaudet explains why restructuring hotel roles and focusing on e-commerce has got business at Pullman Dubai Mall of the Emirates off to a flying start.

Laurent Chaudet is one of the most expressive and energetic people I’ve met, not to mention possibly the smiliest GM in the business. And his role at the helm of the first Pullman hotel in the Middle East is one he is evidently very proud of.

Located at the Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, the Pullman — which is Accor’s upscale, four-star brand — has been operational for six months now.

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From the meeting floor to the executive lounge, the superior room to the suites, and the sleek wine bar Vantage to trendy café Soda Box, Chaudet is eager to give Hotelier a full tour of the property and an update on business so far — and he is more than happy to pose for some photos on the way.

Pullman Dubai Mall of the Emirates has been open six months now. How has business been going?
It went and is going very well for a hotel opening of that size. We have 481 rooms including 91 suites and obviously you don’t bring so many rooms on the market easily, particularly when we were starting to get out of the crisis.

But the pre-opening, the promotion plan and the marketing that we did positioned the hotel pretty well on the local market, and on the regional and international markets, thanks to the Accor network.

When we opened on September 7, 2010 we had 300 rooms, everything was under operation — the executive floor, the swimming pool, the spa, the gym — everything was absolutely ready.

So we did not disappoint our guests, we did not have a real soft opening, all the MEP worked well and we didn’t have any problems. Fortunately the day we opened was in the last days of Ramadan and then it was Eid and we had 150 or 200 rooms booked, mainly coming from the GCC countries — that’s better than any advertising.

So October, November, December we were at 50-55% occupancy, which was the maximum capacity at the time because we had only 250 rooms.

In January, again we were at 50-55%, in February we had 90% occupancy, with at least 10 days fully booked with all 481 rooms. We’re closing March at 71% occupancy, so we’re very happy with that. The occupancy is there; now we have to increase the price.

Pullman is an upscale, four-star hotel joining the five-star luxury Kempinski at Mall of the Emirates. What’s the difference in pricing?
There’s 15-20% difference between the hotels.

In terms of clientele, the Pullman is pretty good for leisure as well as business.

We have [the GCC guests coming for shopping weekends] but we don’t just want to stick with this because this market fluctuates a lot.

We must be very careful to grab segments which are consistent all along the year and from various markets as well. If not, you are too dependent on one market.