The Oetker Collection's senior vice president of development in the Middle East and Africa, Samir Daqqaq, chief financial officer, Dr. Timo Gr?nert, and chief executive officer Frank Marrenbach.
With construction underway on Le Bristol Abu Dhabi, senior management at The Oetker Collection tell Louise Oakley why its level of luxury has yet to be seen in the region
The Oetker Collection’s niche portfolio of individual, grand hotels — most famously Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa in Baden Baden and Le Bristol Paris — are known to luxury hoteliers worldwide, despite the fact that until April, the brand was only present in Europe.
This year marks a milestone for the company, with the opening of the first hotel outside its home continent, Palais Namaskar in Marrakech, Morocco — a selection of 41 suites, villas and palaces set amid 50,000m² of Balinese-inspired gardens.
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And this is just the first step; the next location is Abu Dhabi, where National Corporation for Tourism & Hotels (NCTH) is developing Le Bristol Abu Dhabi, inspired by the renowned Parisian property and the vision of NCTH chairman H.E. Sheikh Hamdan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.
With construction well underway and the hotel scheduled to open in the second half of 2013, Hotelier met with the senior management team at Oetker Collection to find out more about the levels of luxury at these ‘masterpiece’ hotels, which senior vice president development Middle East and Africa Samir Daqqaq says “has not [yet] been in this part of the world”.
“In Dubai and the Gulf we’ve got so many of those luxury hotels but they lack service. The product is good but I think we lack the consistent service and the service we really believe should fit this kind of luxury that we talk about,” asserts Daqqaq. “We believe in not too much of an ostentatious luxury, a luxury that is more sublime and divine.
“You can have the most impressive palace with chandeliers and the works but if it doesn’t have those people that can light up that experience it doesn’t work. We are of a totally different calibre.”
Dr. Timo Grünert, CFO, explains that The Oetker Collection’s aim is to serve the frequent individual traveller, accustomed to luxury and looking for uniqueness — “people who’ve been there, done it and bought the t-shirt as they say”, adds Daqqaq.
“We have in our hotels a large client base from the Middle East, people who go all over the world,” says Grünert. “When you look at the core of it, this FIT who knows the world does not want to enter a hotel and be overwhelmed by big lobby or marble and that’s for me the standard experience you have when you walk into a five-star luxury hotel.
You look around and say ‘oh wow’ but after five minutes when the wow effect is gone, you have to stay for a day, for a week and so we want to create a hotel product which embraces you and you say ‘wow, I feel comfortable here, I feel protected, so here I stay’. I would say this feeling is lacking in this part of the world,” asserts Grünert.
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