Sofitel vice president Middle East, Africa and Indian Ocean, Sami Nasser, talks about the “new generation” of the luxury French hotel brand and spending his “whole life” with Accor
Sofitel may have been all change within the last few years — downsizing from 207 hotels to just 120 in order to concentrate on repositioning the brand — but its vice president for the Middle East, Africa and the Indian Ocean, Sami Nasser, is as solid as they come, having started working with Accor 25 years ago and spending his “whole life” with the French-based company.
“I have always been with Accor — I have just moved brands within the company,” he explains.
| Advertisement |
“ I have a background in sales and marketing and then I moved to operations , actually I was one of the youngest GMs in Accor at this time — I was just 25 years old and before coming to Sofitel, I was in charge of the business development for Accor for a while.
“In Accor it is very exciting because you have these different brands and different standards. With Sofitel it is interesting how we are pushing this brand because we wanted to have a French, European luxury brand, because luxury comes from Europe,” he adds.
Repositioning Sofitel as an Accor luxury brand has meant Nasser has a very clear idea of what luxury travellers are expecting from their hotels.
“These guests are not just looking for good service and a good product — they want more. They expect a property to be excellent and the service to be super top service,” he says.
“People are also looking for an experience — it is knowing that for some people luxury is space and for others it’s time. We also have to look at what luxury is for our parents’ generation, for us, for our children.
“Things are moving very fast these days — customers are now spending time on the internet comparing hotels, checking prices and making bookings and we have to be a part of this, so customers want more,” he adds.
Regional expansion
Although Nasser maintains it was important to downsize Sofitel to work on the brand positioning, this doesn’t mean that there will be no more Sofitels opening up — far from it.
With Sofitel’s Mauritius property ‘So Mauritius’ newly opened, the next step is the Middle East — with one hotel planned in Abu Dhabi for 2011 and two hotels planned to open in Dubai next year, and ambitions to enter other regional markets.
“We are looking all around the region, and I am really pushing to be in Syria when it will be quiet, of course I would also like us to be in Saudi Arabia — you cannot not be in Saudi Arabia,” he says.
“We actually already have one property opened over there, in Al Khobar, which is doing very well, but we would like to be in Makkah and also in Riyadh. Then we are looking at Jordan, and further afield South Africa, because that is also my region,” he adds.
But despite the desire to increase Sofitel’s presence in the Middle East, Nasser explains that the idea isn’t to have properties for properties’ sake.
“We have a target, but we will not just go for things to have them open because we really would like to have the right hotels.
So we have to wait or provoke the opportunities so that we have the right hotel and the right owner — this is really important.
“So you have the first question which is finding the right destination, which we look at because it is necessary for business, then you have the opportunity.
For us the best thing is to have a hotel which is under construction, because then we can recommend a design and a French designer and we can play a lot with the project. If we have a hotel which is already done then we look at the details and the technical design to make it not necessarily more French, but closer to France,” he says of the design.
“When we did the repositioning we wanted all the hotels to become luxury, to be on a really high level, so we did renovation programmes for the existing hotels, and now all the hotels that are coming in are new generation Sofitels,” he concludes.
About Sami Nasser
Sami Nasser has 25 years of experience working initially in sales and marketing, then as a general manager for various brands within Accor in several countries, followed by a position as director of
operations in Poland.
In 2008, Nasser was assigned the post of senior vice president for business and network development in the distribution division where he handled the North American, Scandinavian and Russian sales offices. In 2009 Nasser took up his current role as vice president operations for Sofitel Middle East, Africa and Indian Ocean.
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
Aug 1, 2011 , USA
Astonishing pieces of work!