CEO INTERVIEW: Cristal's Peter Blackburn

Cristal CEO Peter Blackburn left Rotana in 2006, having worked on 23 openings. With two of his own hotels now open, he is at the helm of what he hopes will be a major rival

Peter Blackburn left his hometown of Sunderland, in the North East of England, in 1976 for the Middle East. Blackburn was a mechanical engineer and, after 11 years, he stumbled into the world of hospitality through a job at InterContinental Hotels Group as a director of engineering.

Since then, he hasn’t looked back, having worked his way up the ladder, and has just signed his fourth hotel after founding Cristal Hotels and Resorts in 2006.

Blackburn spent nine years with IHG, in London and Egypt, before making the move to Beijing to take up the role of regional director of engineering with Peninsula. “That was a challenge, that one,” he says.

After spending three and a half years there, he eventually left the position and joined the Abu Dhabi-based Rotana group as its vice president for technical services in 1998. “During my years there I climbed, and I developed,” he explains. “I opened 23 Rotana hotels, doing the design stages, planning and pre-opening etc, throughout the Middle East.”

In 2006, Blackburn took a leap of faith – he left Rotana and launched Cristal Hotels and Resorts. Only a year later, and the four-star, 192-room Cristal Hotel opened in Abu Dhabi.

He says the timing couldn’t have been worse for the opening, which was “just at the beginning of the crisis”, but “we opened successfully and we positioned ourselves as one of the top five there”.

“I think we were aggressive in the market. Myself and the team all had 45 years of experience between us in hospitality,” Blackburns explains, “and I think hospitality is a 24-hour business, so you have to be there around the clock.”

“But ourselves, with Rotana, Peninsula and InterContinental, are all top brands. We are used to high standards and we are focused on what the businessman really wants.”

“If you look on Trip Advisor, today in Abu Dhabi, we are at number five and number seven in the ranking of 89 hotels,” Blackburn says.

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He adds: “One advantage we have is that we have two hotels in the city. One is dry, and one has alcohol, so we can get the best of both markets.”

However, Blackburn admits that recently, business has been a little rougher than usual in the emirate: “Business so far this year has been quite slow. It’s not as busy as last year, as there are more hotels in the market, of course. Everyone is trying to get a bite of the same cake.”

He says that it has not been the occupancy levels that have worried him, but the prices. “The new hotels that are coming in are coming into a hard market, and they might be five-star, but they are dropping their rates below the standard. A lot are coming down almost to the four-star level, which is quite scary, really.”

Expansion
Despite this, there is a lot of cash being invested into Cristal’s new properties. It has just signed a deal to open a hotel in Lebanon by August this year, on which his partners, businessmen Elias Badr and Edmond Marjaba, are spending US $2 million on renovations.

Blackburn is also eyeing three hotels in Saudi Arabia, with one already being signed. There are two around Riyadh and one in the eastern province. One on the outskirts of Riyadh, which will be rebranded, is a “very high calibre, prestigious, futuristic hotel,” he says. “Very contemporary.”

“Saudi Arabia is probably one of the biggest markets in the region with regards to internal tourism and religious tourism,” the hotelier explains, “and there’s such a shortage of hotels there, and international chains.

I just came back from Riyadh and their occupancy levels are 100% from Saturday to Tuesday, and Wednesday to Saturday around 65%. It’s fantastic. And rates are higher — you’re talking almost double the UAE.”

While the biggest opportunities he is seeing currently are in other areas of the region, Blackburn notes that he hasn’t given up on the prospect of more hotels in the UAE. “I think Abu Dhabi is fine for now, but we are still focusing on Dubai, because we have our board of directors in Abu Dhabi, so we have them actively looking for properties in Dubai, Al Ain and maybe Ras Al Khaimah.”

The story so far seems to echo that of the company Blackburn used to work for himself – Rotana, which started in the same emirate in 1992. “We’re doing it slightly differently to Rotana,” he explains, adding that Cristalis an operator, partnering with various other companies in regional branch offices – it has announced one tie-up in Lebanon and another in Qatar this year already.

“We feel more comfortable having local partners in each country for added support. And I think that’s the secret. They give you local knowledge, which is an advantage, and they help us get moving faster as a company.”

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Pipeline
Looking to the future, Blackburn has grand ambitions for the group that stretch well beyond the GCC. “We established in 2006, we positioned ourselves carefully and correctly and now our pipeline is opening,” he explains.

“We have 20 projects in the pipeline. And unfortunately you can’t stop the pipeline. Some of them you may lose, though, and some take time to negotiate.”

On top of KSA and Lebanon, he shares that there are two hotels on the negotiation table in Qatar, and he is about to sign a property in Erbil, in the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

“I’ve been [to Erbil] several times and it’s very safe and secure. It’s a very, very nice part of the country.” However, Blackburn is not content to stay within the Middle East. He plans to sign a “prestigious” hotel in the Indian Ocean, near the Seychelles. He also signed a joint venture in 2011 with Rufi Group, a large real estate developer in Pakistan.

However, Blackburn says that because of the “political situation” in Pakistan, plans have been scaled back to five hotels being opened by 2018. As many would agree, Cristal’s overall ambition to have 25 properties confirmed within the next five years, even after scaling back, is impressive.

“It’s a very intensive programme,” Blackburn says. “It’s achievable, though. All going well, by the end of this year, we’ll be at eight properties confirmed.”