Q4 is set to be a busy period for Qatar’s Le Mirage Hospitality; the company is both relaunching following a brand uplift and opening its first internationally-managed hotel, Amari Doha
When he joined Qatar-based Le Mirage Hospitality as CEO in 2010 after 26 years with hotel giant Marriott International, Vatché Yergatian had two main challenges; to develop the Le Mirage brand and to look for opportunities for growth.
Two years on and it seems he has accomplished both of these tasks. The company has completed a brand uplift, including the upgrade of all service standards, a new image and relaunched website, and it is also preparing to open Amari Doha, a four-star hotel being managed by Thailand’s Onyx Hospitality.
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Plus, there are other opportunities on the horizon for Le Mirage, which is part of General Trading Group (GTG), headed by chairman H.E. Sheikh Abdullah Bin Ahmad Al Thani.
Brand uplift
Yergatian, who spearheaded the brand initiative, explains the process: “First of all, [the focus] was the service deliverables — focus on the customer appreciation, customer contact, targeting customers we lost and we try to gain back, upgrading our services, training our staff [to overcome] challenges they had before. My focus was to look at the services that were wrongly handled and arrange training.”
The brand’s target market covers expatriate individuals and families on long-stays in Doha and long and short-stay visitors to the city, all in the high income group.
As a result, Yergatian says his priority was his “customers’ comfort”: “You want to treat or give service to people the way that you like to be accommodated”.
He says that already occupancy has increased at the hotels he manages, which include Le Mirage Village, Le Mirage Executive Apartments and Le Mirage Suites — largely down to word of mouth.
“You can write anything you want on a website or in an article but people’s experience for me is what you want to see – that happened, occupancy went up by average of 5-10%," says Yergatian.
He adds that the improvements were aimed at building volume, not the rate.
“The rate is not the focus, it’s not that you improve and then increase the rate because you have to be competitive with the market, that’s what I believe — increasing the volume is the priority, increasing room nights, that’s my goal. Increasing the rate is not the solution,” asserts Yergatian.
“Our current residences are top notch, of a high-end quality. At Le Mirage Village we are running 100% and at the Executive Apartments we are running currently year-to-date 98% and they are long-term [lets] from a year to two years.”
The ultimate objective of the brand uplift was to create a “unified brand experience” across the portfolio and infuse “more style, essence and persona into the Le Mirage identity.
“We want people who are engaged and involved with the brand to feel proud of staying in Le Mirage properties,” asserts the new updated brand statement.
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