Obsession with service
This slightly quirky approach to the design also filters through to the service, explains Power.
“It’s about an obsession with service; it’s about not being too formal, while still being respectful and making the hotel fun to go to; clearly if you are out on leisure, fun will be your main element, but 49% of our business is corporate so we try to make it a bit more fun for them too,” he explains.
Creating this service ethos was one of the benefits of setting up the new brand, says Power, and he is confident of transferring this to the Abu Dhabi property.
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“We tend to be able to get a real Rocco Forte feel of the service delivery in each one of the hotels and to some degree we don’t quite understand how we’ve done it, but we work very hard on induction, we try and have a relatively soft opening where we’ll try and use some of our own people as customers.
“We also have a tremendously experienced GM there who has opened out here twice successfully, so I think it will be a good hotel. The middle management team, which is really what makes a hotel tick — the GM and then those key people that motivate and train the service crews — comprises some very, very good people; we’ve been absolutely inundated with applications.”
The GM Power refers to is Hagop Doghramadjian, who has been with Rocco Forte for 18 months and previously opened Raffles Dubai and Hilton Jeddah.
Doghramadjian echoes Power’s views on the service: “We will mirror and repeat what Rocco Forte is reputed for and famous for — excellence in service with simplistic luxury, where we make our customers feel comfortable, at ease, with no hiccoughs and no complications.
We are discrete but we know, we support and do everything possible to make that customer, whether in the bar or in the spa or in the room, feel secure and in good hands. We stand by our words and provide what we promise. We walk the talk.
“I want to bring to Abu Dhabi that European know-how with a touch of the UK, where our main office is located, and our hotels so well placed in Germany and Italy. We have a lot of European connections and experience that we want to filter into Abu Dhabi.
“I’m not saying we are better or worse, but you have a lot of Arabic or Arabesque hotels around; we want to bring more of the European feel,” says Doghramadjian.
On that note, how does the team think the GCC market will respond to the European approach? Power says that despite a deliberate focus on UK and American travellers — the latter provide Rocco Forte Hotels’ strongest market — he has been “very pleasantly surprised” by the response of GCC locals.
“We were a bit worried we might not fit that, because the image of a Middle Eastern guest is someone who needs gold leaf everywhere and the like. I think if you take a strong brand positioning you know you won’t appeal to everybody, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response, particularly from the younger families in their 30s and 40s — they seem to adapt to our style, it’s more discrete, they can stay without being the centre of attention.”
Plus, the company is very well connected in the region from its previous work with Forte Plc, which owned the Meridien brand and three years ago, it decided to make a big effort at getting more Middle Eastern customers.
For the European hotels, the GCC is now the fourth biggest market after Germany and it has been one of the biggest growers over the past 12 months.
“We finished our financial year at the end of April and our revenues for the Middle East are up 23%, which in the first half of a year we were still coming out of a recession [h1 2010]. A lot of that growth is driven by rate because of our high suite count,” says Power.
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