Chain of the month: Jumeirah

As Jumeirah Group takes its renowned brand of Arabian hospitality worldwide, Karen Osman explains why the Dubai-based luxury hotel group is doing the UAE proud

I have met the executive chairman of Jumeirah Group, Gerald Lawless, on several occasions. Each time, he has referred to one aspect of Jumeirah which he believes accounts for the success of the company.

The Hallmarks, a set of three standards which the employees, or colleagues as Jumeirah calls them, live by, are quite clearly something Lawless feels passionate about. No doubt, they will play a role when it comes to the international expansion of the company — one of the group’s major focuses going forward.

“We have developed the Jumeirah reputation around standards of service that recognise the uniqueness of our guests and the need to ensure that our culture is based on what we call our ‘Hallmarks’, which fully recognises the importance of the hospitality business — which after all is a ‘people’ business,” Lawless explains.

This reputation has been established in a remarkably short time frame. As a home-grown brand, Jumeirah has expanded significantly since the company was founded in 1997.

In addition to Jumeirah Hotels & Resorts, the company has five other divisions including its own spa brand called Talise; a residential division, Jumeirah Living; and Jumeirah Restaurants, the restaurant franchise arm.

With 12 properties currently open worldwide, including 11 Hotels & Resorts and the World Trade Centre Jumeirah Living residence in Dubai, the group has ambitious plans when it comes to future expansion.

Cherif Hosny, SVP development for the Middle East, Africa, India & Indian Ocean for the group, who is in the enviable position of expanding the luxury brand, explains the strategy: “We are continuing the worldwide expansion of Jumeirah Hotels and Resorts, with a strong focus on Asia and the Middle East.

We continue to see interesting opportunities in Europe and the Americas — in fact we have just opened Jumeirah Frankfurt and next year will see Jumeirah Port Soller open in Mallorca, Spain”.

Within these markets, Jumeirah will focus on key cities or destinations and only the best locations within these areas will be considered. With management agreements already in place for approximately 40 hotels and resorts, which includes properties already in operation, under development or in the planning stages, good relations are the foundation.

“The relationship with an owner or developer is key. We aim to establish successful relationships and this can result in multiple deals with a single owner — even before we open a first hotel with them,” continues Hosny.

And being able to offer potential owners and developers a variety of portfolio options surely helps.

“The restaurant brands that are managed by Jumeirah Restaurants are certainly an extra asset for us, as the owner or developer of a hotel has the option of setting up one of the franchises in the property.

These brands range from the portfolio of Caprice Holding brands that Jumeirah has the rights to use in the Middle East, such as The Ivy, Le Caprice and Scott’s, to home-grown brands that are licensed internationally, such as The Noodle House.”

With almost 30 years’ experience within the hotel industry, Hosny is very much on the pulse when it comes to current trends: “Some of the new markets that are interesting to developers include key cities in African countries — Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa. Emerging markets for luxury hotel brands are also becoming more interesting for the long-term, countries such as Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

There is more and more demand for hotels and resorts that have a low carbon footprint and that are respectful of their environment. And travellers want to stay in a hotel that has a strong cultural connection with the destination, whether it is in the interior design, the cuisine, the goods on display or even in the scents of the hotel.”

Middle East market
As a key market for expansion, the Middle East represents 43% of the portfolio of projects currently either under development, under construction or in operation.  However, the region is also imperative from a sales perspective.

Christian Pertl, vice president sales and marketing for Dubai, refers to the importance of Gulf countries and the need for a dedicated sales approach: “Jumeirah understands that actually one of the biggest new markets with a massive potential is on our doorstep, the GCC, so we have started this year being quite active with regards to marketing activities.

“We invested quite a lot of money into tacticals, awareness campaigns and so on and just recently announced our dedicated GCC sales team. The interesting thing is that we saw instant results because usually it takes time to develop the market. That is very interesting and also where we want to have a big focus in the future.

“Why? You have every segment available in the GCC, it is not only leisure but it is also corporate. Saudi Arabia is a hub of pharmaceutical businesses. It is very interesting; you can actually get quite a lot of meetings. And also they will normally travel in periods where the rest of the world is usually slowing down a little bit, such as Christmas,” observes Pertl.

The sentiment is echoed by Stephan Schupbach, general manager of the recently opened Jumeirah Zabeel Saray, who witnessed approximately 60% of business coming from the GCC during the opening phase of his hotel in Dubai.

“That means we have certainly had a great response from our home-grown market and I think we have done a very good job. I am very proud of the team,” says Schupbach.

What’s interesting about Jumeirah Zabeel Saray in regard to the region is the Talise Ottoman Spa and while sister properties such as Madinat Jumeirah and Jumeirah Emirates Towers also offer Talise, the sheer size and opulence of the spa at the new hotel is reputed to be putting the region on the map as a spa destination.

“Now Dubai has a big spa culture, even though we think it is not a spa destination but you have seen along Jumeirah Beach Road or any of the other roads in Dubai over the last few years, different spas with different elements of experience popping up left, right and centre and that tells you something,” says Schupbach.

“It was telling me certainly that the GCC has actually a big culture around spa and with that said, I joined the Global Spa Summit in May as I wanted to first of all understand, where do we fit in the Middle East, where does the brand sit, and where are we going in general with the spa business? Now it is a multi-billion dollar industry, and this is something you cannot neglect.”

Since the beginning of 2011, Jumeirah has opened four hotels and resorts over three continents in Dubai, Shanghai, the Maldives and Frankfurt, with several more opening in the Middle East and beyond over the coming 12 months including Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

That’s not to say that Jumeirah’s home base of Dubai has been neglected, however. In fact, despite many factors such as unrest in the region and the recession, hard work and dedication have paid off.

“For example in some of our properties, especially on the beach, we enjoyed, year to date, a double digit RevPAR growth in comparison to last year,” reports Pertl.

Jumeirah Living also increased by five percentage points year to date versus the same period last year. The highest producing source market for Dubai hotels so far has been the UK, followed closely by Russia (with Russia also exhibiting strong growth year on year), Germany and the GCC.

Pertl attributes such success to a variety of factors: “We have started bringing together a commercial approach to the market, rather than an [isolated] sales, marketing or revenue approach…if you have these elements playing together, it is actually very powerful. So I think we have understood certain trends or certain behaviours in the market very well.

“We have understood that our key source markets will always be the UK, Germany or Russia. But we have also learnt as a company that there is new business out there – we are in China already and very successful.”

Lawless elaborates: “I think that everyone understands that China is a significant player economically and we see not only in terms of the opportunities that exist within China to develop hotels, but we’ve also seen an upsurge in visitor numbers to Dubai, in particular into Burj Al Arab.

Now that the UAE received its Approved Destination Status from the Chinese government, we believe that both the inbound and outbound tourism from China will continue to be a major factor for the future of our industry.

In addition we look forward to many more openings in China; in fact we already have five other projects under development as we speak.”

Twenty-seven percent of the guests who have stayed in Jumeirah properties in Dubai, London and New York since 2009 have stayed with Jumeirah more than once. Schupbach says this success is down to how the team “listens to the guests”.

“We try to obviously live on the repeat business and this is where you save money if you look after your client base.”

Also crucial to Jumeirah’s success is Sirius, the company’s reward and recognition programme.

Piers Schreiber, vice president of corporate affairs, explains: “There are several factors that contribute to programme return, including perceived reward value, buy-more rate, visit rate, member acquisition and costs.

We created a model that incorporates these influencing factors, basing it on client data. We began creating the reward-optimisation model by first making observations regarding loyalty-member behaviour and how it relates to the perceived value of the programme benefits”.

Looking ahead
So what does the future hold for Jumeirah Group? With 27 openings over the next three years world-wide from the Americas to Asia, the operations team will be very busy indeed. Some of these projects include incorporating residences under Jumeirah Living.

“We see it [Jumeirah Living] as complementing the Stay Different brand, and in most cases Jumeirah Living projects will be part of mixed-use developments, so there will be certain exceptions to this, particularly as we already have the World Trade Centre Residences in Dubai.

In certain locations, where we are well established we may also consider some stand-alone Jumeirah Living properties and some Jumeirah Stay Different projects,” reports Lawless.

While Jumeirah’s new hotel brand, Venu is currently on hold in order to focus on the Stay Different brand, the future is firmly focused on expansion.

“Within the next seven months we anticipate opening Jumeirah Creekside (Dubai), Jumeirah at Etihad Towers (Abu Dhabi), Jumeirah Vittaveli (Maldives), Jumeirah Messilah Beach (Kuwait) and Jumeirah Bilgah Beach Hotel, Baku (Azerbaijan), and this will bring us up to a total of 19 properties in operation,” says Lawless.

Closer to home in Dubai, investment into existing properties will take place. “We are consistently investing into our products. We have two stories at the moment.

One is a major room refurbishment on its way at Jumeirah Beach Hotel so we are doing all the rooms over the next two years….and then we are doing the same with Jumeirah Emirates Towers — we are doing a soft room refurbishment on all the rooms there,” enthuses Pertl.

From a sales perspective, 2012 will focus on the meetings, incentives, conference and events (MICE) segment.

Building on the 500% increase between 2010 and 2011 (year to date) witnessed at Madinat Jumeirah in Dubai, driving the MICE market will also be a key strategy for the city hotels such as Jumeirah Emirates Towers and the new Jumeirah Creekside Hotel opening in January, 2012.

Similarly in Europe, Jumeirah Frankfurt is preparing for approximately 30% in group business to support revenues for its ballroom and meeting rooms.

While it’s interesting to note that the UAE is in the top five markets for the Dubai hotels, the continuous development of newer markets will also be crucial. “New markets, such as China and India, have responded very positively to the Jumeirah brand promise of ‘Stay Different’.

And this is reflected in the fact that we have seen increases of over 50% in business from these markets. The hallmarks of the Jumeirah philosophy make it easier to persuade travellers who have experienced our hotels and resorts in Dubai to try our other properties,” explains Schreiber.

Jumeirah is often seen as one of the success stories of the region; a brand that has positioned itself within the competitive luxury market and continues to thrive.

Such success is represented by its multitude of awards including Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Awards, not to mention a range of Hotelier Middle East and Caterer Middle East Awards. But, what makes it so successful?

“It comes back to our culture — which is based on the people that stay with us, and the people that stay with us are serviced by the people that work for us. Therefore, as we call our employees our “colleagues”, they are probably one of the most important aspects in terms of how we look after our guests and how the reputation of Jumeirah falls,” says Lawless.

Arabian Hospitality meets German efficiency
With the opening of Jumeirah Frankfurt, the first hotel for Jumeirah Group in mainland Europe, general manager Dagma Woodward explains how she brought the ‘Stay Different’ philosophy to Germany.

Hire the right people
“The most difficult part of our approach was to get the right people. Jumeirah is not that known in Germany. We did a lot of promotions, we organised ads, interviews, we printed cards for distribution.

We did career launches. We would invite people every Wednesday to our offices — and we would have a food and beverage table, rooms division table, sales and marketing table, and people could just come and enquire as to what the hotel was all about. It was a great success as we received a lot of interested people through these career days.”

Introduce the brands
“We have a small spa — only five treatment rooms. We are a business hotel so people wouldn’t go to the spa like they would at Jumeirah Zabeel Saray. We need to get the local women here. We will also do special deals for men because more and more men do spa treatments now. It’s a Talise urban spa — for Frankfurt, it’s super.”

Understand your market
The Germans are very ecologically-minded. So looking after the environment is very important. If we were to fly in food, that would be bad for the environment, so everything is sourced locally from farmers in the local mountains, where the animals are free and where we can go and have a look.The whole product, everything that we use in the hotel is really ecological. It’s very important in this country.”