The roundtable was the first event to take place in one of the ballrooms at JW Marriott Marquis Dubai.
So this is very much a build it and they will come approach?
Rupprecht: Yes correct.
Mario: Dubai is still not perceived as a MICE destination but I think with the opening of the JW Marriott Marquis and the Conrad we will definitely drive new business to Dubai and contribute to positioning Dubai as a MICE destination for larger conferences and events.
Rupprecht: It’s really a case of education. This is where we work very closely with the convention bureaus, they’ve been looking for a hotel like this where they can host a meeting because his advantages [at Conrad] and their advantages [Fairmont] are also my advantages and we can really complement each other because the convention guy also likes to go to the beach, go to the restaurant. The convention I have booked for January, they’re here five nights, 700 rooms, they’re going to discover the town, hit the shopping malls, go to the beach, hit the desert safaris and the camel shows — this is added business to the city which the city would have never had.
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Luigi: And they would have gone elsewhere without this.
Pep: In Abu Dhabi we are pushing hard for it; we just had a major site inspection for car launches. We have been in the market already for 18 months, we are working very closely with ADTCA to attract big groups and major events – one of them will be next year WTTC – that’s a huge conference that was pulled from Tokyo that is now happening in Abu Dhabi and that’s thanks to ADTCA. The real advantage for us is having three five-star hotels in the same location — Fairmont, Shangri-La and Ritz-Carlton — it’s about 2000 rooms in the same area just right across the water and we’re actually competing with other hotels on the Corniche.
What stage of pre-opening are you at and when are you opening?
Rupprecht: The target is still the last quarter of this year. Right now, we are pretty much deciding all the uniforms, thousands of them, we are at hiring stage, in the stages of receiving all the furniture, all the furniture has arrived now, we are putting it into place. The restaurant concept design is very important, we are pretty much finalising that. The linen, china, glassware — all of that alone is about $3.5 million.
The fit out stage should be finished within a month, that includes carpets down, total fit out and then you start the details and then you start the snagging and then you have fire life safety tests and security tests – that’s the final stage, where you test all the entire building for life safety which is crucial.
You want to pass all those and then you can pretty much move in and start operating. We have 19 kitchens to fire up — we are hiring over 250 culinary people and they’re going to be here soon firing up kitchens. Right now, we have about 60, 65 on the team, mainly managers, some support staff. By the end of June we will have a management team of about 100. When we open in Q4, we expect numbers to reach 1150.
Martin: We’re opening around the same time. Q3 or Q4 is quite a big target to be hitting but I think that in Dubai that’s a relatively accurate answer to give. Because obviously everything is so much dependant on getting your certificates on time, your building completion certificates need to be finalised — it’s a long spider’s web of flow charts that you have to go through and one thing can’t be done before the thing above it.
We’re looking at October for our opening. The building is completed, back of house, front of house all completed, carpets are all down, the only thing that isn’t done yet is the loading of the building with all the furniture, that can only be done once we’ve got building completion certificates in place but that’s all on ships at the moment ready to come in.
We’ve got 55 colleagues on board at the moment and they’re managers. We will be ramping up to roughly 700 colleagues by end July, beginning August, doing training during Ramadan — it’s going to be flip-sided days, training will be done at night rather than in the day, so it gives a lot of people opportunities to become culturally sensitised during the holy month.
Luigi: We are in the fit-out stage of our project right now. The building is structurally completed for the most part so now all the soft goods are starting to come alive, all the designs are coming alive and it’s a very exciting part of the project because I’ve seen all the wall coverings, the carpets coming in and we have a very beautiful understated design, it’s not a flash hotel, it’s a very elegant hotel, and I see the marble and the wood and I say ‘oh gosh it’s about time to open now’!
Now there are 20 of us at executive level and department head level. We are anticipating to receive the building some time in September and then the ownership has been very committed to give us a good three months to do full training.
We’re really going to start bringing people from all over the world, it’s going to require a great level of focus on really teaching all the details of running one of our hotels. We don’t want to do a soft opening.
I don’t believe in training when we have the guests, the day that we open the door we’re going to have the full article there, we’ll have everyone working there and everyone is going to be fully trained. We do all our experiential training among ourselves, we put heads in beds and [involve] other officials from Rosewood.
We have this whole training system which allows us to really measure the level of service internally and then once we open from the first day we’re going to be fully on with that.
We are expecting about 650 staff to start with for an 189-room hotel, because we have another 127 serviced apartments above us for short- and long-term stays, including some wonderful penthouses.
Mario: We’re targeting the end of Q4. Right now the building is about 80% complete, back of house is completely done. The contractor is starting to work on the finishings, within the next two weeks we will have air conditioning on site, this will be the stage where we start to bring in the furniture.
The furniture is already here in Dubai and we expect complete handover including all the certifications from the local authorities approximately end of August, middle of September. From that stage onwards we’ll do the fit out, the training, the opening simulation — the objective is to open 12 December.
Right now we are 12 — I have my four directors and some key heads of departments, by end of June the team will be up to 30, by end August I will have all my key team members on board — approximately 100 —and six weeks before the opening I will have my full team on board. We are targeting to open the hotel with approximately 750 team members and 850 after a month of opening.
Pep: At the Ritz-Carlton we just finalised the landscaping of the whole resort to make sure that when we open the landscaping is immaculate. We have a total of 40 people right now, mainly sales and marketing and guidance team members. Chef is already finalising the menus and we should expect by end June, first week of July to have all the managers on board; we calculate around 90 people to come on board.
The expected opening date is right after Ramadan so really we’re ramping up at the moment. In terms of the restaurants, four are completely finished, we’re just waiting for the furniture. In terms of staffing we will have ramp up as we are opening in September but once the hotel is fully open with the Venetian Village, the spa we are calculating around 1000 employees – for 530 rooms plus Venetian Village. The Venetian Village will be managed by the owning company ADNH but once the guests are in the resort they will not know it’s not all managed by Ritz-Carlton so training and procedures will be under Ritz-Carlton.
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