With two celebrity chef restaurants, as well as six other F&B outlets at Melia Dubai, GM Gilles Longuet is ready to face Dubai's culinary competition. With two celebrity chef restaurants, as well as six other F&B outlets at Melia Dubai, GM Gilles Longuet is ready to face Dubai's culinary competition.

Spanish community
With the service culture and product established — Longuet says all facilities will be open by the end of May except for the spa and Estrellas which will come a little later — the focus now is on sales and marketing, with the Spanish and Latin American markets of major importance.

Meliá Dubai director of sales and marketing Vanessa Waldow explains: “The GCC is going to be very important for us, Europe and Spain for sure of course — Spain will be the leading country for us not only for corporate business but for leisure business, having direct flights with Emirates to Madrid and Barcelona and Latin America, due to the flight connection to Rio and Buenos Aires, so all the Latin and Spanish markets are going to play a big role for us”.

She says Dubai is a popular stop-over destination for the Spanish.

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“Many travel to Australia and they do a three-day stopover in Dubai and Bur Dubai is quite known for its stopovers — they stay in the centre and the historical side and close to the airport so it is a great location.”

Longuet adds: “The South American continent is aware of this brand because, do not forget, it is one of the top [17 hotel] companies in the world.

“We have a strong relation with the trade attaché, with the embassy, the new ambassador
came — it was his first day in Dubai and he stayed with us. The Spanish are very concerned with their own services and companies and Meliá will be their home away from home. It’s something they will be looking for — there are 1800 Spanish living in Dubai, there is a lot of movement, a lot of people travelling and stopping over.”

As with all hotel businesses, targeting online bookings is of increasing importance for Meliá.

“We are expecting a good 30% coming from online business,” says Waldow. “Of course, we hope that most of the bookings will come from our own website; this is what every company is aiming at. We have a strong distribution and e-commerce team that sits in the corporate office in Palma and they will help us, so there is a full strategy behind the whole e-commerce and distribution part.”

The final piece of the puzzle as Meliá gets ready for business, therefore, is the people that work for the hotel. Longuet currently has more than 200 staff and is looking to grow this to 240, as we speak.

“We do have quite a good number [of Spanish employees],” he says, “not only Spanish, Columbian, Uruguayan, Swedish-Spanish for example, something unique! We try as much as we can to bring all the different elements but the main element is the passion of service.

We try to educate all our employees as much as we can, coming from 30 different nationalities, to educate them and give them the Spanish philosophy of welcoming and serving guests as per Meliá.

“So far we are quite pleased — we recruited talented young people who have the possibility to grow with the group in the region. We were not looking for the position they occupy today, but the potential position they occupy tomorrow. This is important for the group as well to identify the talent,” asserts Longuet.

Everything is in place, therefore, for Meliá to make its mark on Dubai, and with its Spanish heritage, culinary showpieces and promise of passionate service, this looks like being a refreshing new addition to Bur Dubai’s hotel scene.

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