BRAND PROFILE: Le Mirage Hospitality
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.
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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Future expansion
With the brand now fine-tuned and firmly established, Yergatian says the owner GTG has a vision to open further properties in Doha, including a resort and city hotels, although they “are taking it one step at a time to make the right decision”.
“Our focus is mainly four-star because we see the market is there for budget hotels, four-star properties and three-star residences because that’s where the money is.
“There were some talks to expand in the Middle East region, but now we just want to establish here [in Qatar] because that’s the bread and butter,” asserts Yergatian.
“There is great potential for Le Mirage Hospitality to expand.”
New Partner
Coming up next month is Le Mirage Hospitality’s launch of the four-star Amari Doha, owned by parent company GTG, which will mark the Middle Eastern debut of Thailand-based hotel management company Onyx Hospitality.
It’s also the first time Le Mirage has appointed a third-party operator to run one of its hotels.
Yergatian comments: “We know they have their own distribution, their own brand in Thailand and we thought we could get the leverage out of it because we don’t have all the systems in Le Mirage Hospitality, so we thought [we would appoint] a known group [from Asia], and give a twist to one of our properties — it will be Middle Eastern hospitality with a twist of Asian deliverables or service”.
The 120-room Amari Doha, scheduled to open on October 1, 2012, is located close to the Msheireb development — formerly known as Dohaland — and 15 minutes from Doha International Airport.
The hotel, which will target the corporate market, will feature a 24-hour restaurant, a cafe with deli and a rooftop lounge. It will also have a business centre, fitness centre, swimming pool and Breeze spa.
Onyx Hospitality president and chief executive officer Peter Henley describes the property as a “very classic, good Amari”.
“The slightly differentiating factor about it is that it will be dry — our first dry hotel,” reveals Henley.
“That’s what the owner wants and we’re quite comfortable with that. He understands that there’s a certain segment that won’t come to the hotel but there’s also a segment that wouldn’t otherwise do so.
“We were quite keen to do it because I think that will become more and more relevant in the Middle East, or to a segment of that marketplace,” says Henley.
Onyx Hospitality’s entrance to the Middle East is part of a major expansion plan targeting a total of 80 properties by 2018.
Currently, the group has 34 operating hotels and a confirmed pipeline of 11.
“We’re looking at signed contracts to go up to 45 in the next couple of years,” says Henley. “I have a 10-year plan — by 2018 to become a leading Asian hospitality provider," he asserts.
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The expansion plan is largely dictated by geography, with Thailand and its bordering countries forming one key market, along with China, the Indian Ocean and Singapore down to western Australia.
But the Middle East, according to Henley, is a “specific location strategy”. He explains: “The fastest growing segments into our hotels in Thailand are from China, India and Middle East.
“We felt it was going to help our inbound business by having greater awareness, properties in the countries they’re coming from. We also wanted to be within a six-to-seven hour flight rate of Bangkok so we could manage these, be there in a day if necessary.”
Although Onyx Hospitality does have a five-star brand, Saffron, Henley is hoping to make his mark in this region through the core Amari brand, the three-star Ozo brand and the serviced apartment brand, Shama — a strategy that aligns well with that of Le Mirage Hospitality.
Henley identifies “Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, Doha, Bahrain, Amman” as the Middle Eastern cities in which to begin development, with the right partner and right location being the deciding factors when it comes to growth.
“We’re not a five-star hotel company. We have a five-star brand but our core is four / four-and-a-half star Amari. You really have to have owners who understand that who don’t really want to build a five-star hotel," he observes.
“We like to create relationships so we’ve hopefully got partners who want to do more than one hotel with us. And who understand that hotel business is a long play. Hotels are profitable but you have to stick with it,” says Henley.
“Equally important is where it is. Location is so important,” continues Henley. “And the brand has got to be specifically appropriate for that location. So those are the two things we really look at — half the emphasis is on finding the right property and a very, very important factor is finding the right person to own that,” he concludes.
Fast facts
Le Mirage Hospitality
Owned by: Gulf Trading Group, Qatar
Business: Hotel owner and operator
Brands: Le Mirage Village, Le Mirage Executive Apartments, Le Mirage Suites and Le Mirage Residence
Hotel portfolio: Four properties in Doha under the above brands, plus upcoming Amari Doha
Onyx Hospitality
Owned by: Italthai Group
Business: Hotel management company, also owns some of its hotels in Thailand
Brands: Saffron (five-star) Amari (four-star); Ozo (three-star); Shama (serviced apartments); plus spa brands Breeze and Maai Spa
Hotel portfolio: 34 hotels in operation in Asia; 11 hotels in pipeline, including Amari Doha.