BRAND DEBUT: Le Bristol Abu Dhabi

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.

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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Ultimately, expands CEO Frank Marrenbach, “we try to create perfect moments”. He wants his guests to use the hotels to find themselves and “focus on you”, but also to “find others” and enjoy the harmony.

“If as a hotelier you create this perfect moment you will never discuss about price because it’s priceless and this is what we do,” says Marrenbach.
“We as hoteliers have one duty; we have to find out what you want and offer what you want,” he adds.

At Palais Namaskar, for example, in partnership with the owner and creator Philippe Soulis — who moved from France to Marrakech for five years to develop the hotel — and designer Imaad Rahmouni, a former associate of Philippe Starck, the “philosophy behind the property is to provide guests with a magical and unique setting in which to disconnect from the world”.

The gardens feature cascading waterfalls and lakes, plus 16 pools, the restaurants are stylish with stunning views and a range of excursions are available.

In addition, to take total control of the guest experience, the resort has its own Falcon 900 LX jet, which offers luxurious flights for Palais Namaskar guests from Casablanca Airport to Marrakech in just 30 minutes and can also be utilised for transfers to other Oetker Collection properties as well as any long haul destinations flying non-stop from New York, Moscow or Dubai.

This has all been achieveable thanks to the partnership with Soulis, explains Marrenbach.

“We prefer to work with real people. While there are good financial institutions, we believe that personal engagement is absolutely necessary to come up with something special. If you just delegate things to others, the result might be good but not perfect.”

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Middle Eastern expansion
Looking for potential partners in this region is high on Marrenbach’s list of priorities, as the group is looking to expand in MENA with Dubai, Doha, Muscat and Cairo earmarked as locations for the group’s ‘masterpieces’.

“We are looking at Oman, we’re looking at Doha, of course, Dubai is definitely on the radar screen big time,” reveals Daqqaq.

However, Grünert says a key challenge with expansion is finding the right location and owner for the group’s “masterpieces”.

“We are looking carefully at a lot of different markets but in a way, [we are looking for] the needle in the haystack — this very special project with the right owner. It’s one thing to talk about masterpiece hotels but it’s another thing to find places,” he says. “When you make two or three mistakes in the development of masterpiece hotels you lose your credibility and that’s obviously not what we intend to do.

Marrenbach says there is one other major challenge that is dictating a gradual growth for The Oetker Collection — the people to create and staff their hotels.

“What’s the bottleneck?” he asks. “The viability of good, skillful people who are willing to design and build. Even the best manager in the world is only as good as his or her hoteliers, that is the challenge. So you’d better pursue a careful growth instead of a super large growth,” warns Marrenbach. “We’re not a global company. We are a very fine selective company and the MENA region is the one we chose to grow the most.”

Quoting the company’s founder, the late Rudolf August Oetker, Marrenbach reminds us: “The one who stops striving to be better stopped striving to be good”.

With Emirates Palace identified as the competition, it sounds like the bar is being raised for Abu Dhabi’s luxury sector.