Following just three years at the helm of Abu Dhabi National Hotels, CEO Richard Riley is set to open two highly anticipated hotels worth AED 2.5 billion by the end of this year. Here he tells Louise Oakley about his journey to date…
It has been a little over a year since Hotelier Middle East met up with Abu Dhabi National Hotels (ADNH) CEO Richard Riley, who joined the hotel owner and operator at the end of 2008, tasked with developing, strengthening and building the company’s portfolio in the region.
As we are about to enter the fourth quarter, Riley is set to display his achievements over the past three years with bricks and mortar — AED 2.5 billion (US $680 million)worth of buildings to be precise.
| Advertisement |
When we last spoke in the middle of 2010, Riley said the group would have two major openings a year from now. True to his word, ADNH is now gearing up to open arguably two of the most iconic luxury hotels to enter Abu Dhabi since the launch of Emirates Palace; Park Hyatt Abu Dhabi Hotel and Villas on Saadiyat Island and The Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi Grand Canal.
“[The Park Hyatt] will open on October 15 for sure. I will give the operator their notification on the 14th as per the contract that we will open on October 15,” Riley tells Hotelier.
He says the resort, which is located on a nine-kilometre stretch of environmentally protected, natural sand beach will be the largest Park Hyatt property in the world with 306 keys. Designed by Perkins Eastmen with interiors by Wilson Associates, it will also be the first hotel to open on Saadiyat Island, the new destination in Abu Dhabi being created by Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC).
Selecting an operator for the landmark Saadiyat property was one of Riley’s first challenges.
“I came to the board with a series of operators and I pushed them in a certain direction and obviously they listened to a certain level and argued to another, but at the end of the day we all agreed that if Hyatt would bring a Park Hyatt to Saadiyat Island for us it would be a good thing, so that’s how we did it.
“Even when I was younger, I always was crazy about the Park Hyatt in Tokyo so it was easy for me when I joined ADNH to push in the direction of Park Hyatt and looking at that site on the beach, we just thought it was a natural fit and it has been and they’ve been very, very good to work with,” says Riley.
ADNH is investing AED 1 billion ($272 million) in the Park Hyatt property, which will offer a minimum room size of 54m², four private villas and 11 secluded ryads, four F&B outlets, an Atarmia Spa and 1220m² of events and meeting space.
It will be the first of two hotels to be opened by ADNH this year, with the AED 1.5 billion ($408 million) Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi Grand Canal also expected to open by the end of 2011.
“I will be pushing very hard to get it open before the end of the year, that’s what we’re doing, I’m not going to nail it down but the bottom line is we feel we’re very, very close and we just hope if everything will stay on schedule that we’ll be able to pull it off,” says Riley.
He has already been on quite a journey with the Grand Canal hotel, which was originally signed as a JW Marriott. It was Riley who saw the potential in the property — which features 532 rooms of a minimum of 52m², a 2200m² ESPA spa, an 1700m² ballroom and an 1800m² swimming pool — to sit in the highest tier segment and pushed through the management change, although this took the best part of last year.
“It was a natural migration but it was very difficult to do because of the fact that it was signed as a JW Marriott,” recalls Riley. “To migrate a management agreement, although it’s partner companies, is a very different approach and it took us seven months to go through every detail of the management agreement and make the adjustments and do the deal and work back and forth and it was a very big challenge. But they wanted it, we wanted to, they love the property, they believe in it and because of that we were able to get to it, but it took seven months.”
Search our database of more than 2,700 industry companies
