Having operated in the UAE for more than 30 years as Jebel Ali International Hotels (JAIH), the Dutco-owned operator relaunched as ‘JA Resorts and Hotels’ on October 1 following an 18-month rebranding process costing several million dollars.
Armed with a new name “born from Jebel Ali, but not an acronym of it”, a new look, new values and new positioning, as well as a newly-streamlined operation and an ambitious strategy, the Dubai-based company is ready to go global, according to chief operating officer David Thomson.
“It’s probably the most exciting time we’ve ever had as a company,’ he says.
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“Up to now we’ve been a very good collection of properties — Jebel Ali Resort and Spa, Palm Tree Court, Hatta Fort Hotel, Oasis Beach Tower and Bateaux Dubai — but what we haven’t been is a brand.
“There were underlying principles we had as a company but you couldn’t pick up a piece of paper that would tell you what they were. What we wanted to do, and have been working on for about 18 months, is creating a brand that we can roll out that is meaningful and encapsulates all the things we think we are and were as JAIH. Take that and export it, take it overseas,” explains Thomson.
To achieve this, JAIH recruited the services of global branding agency ‘Interbrand’. “They came over here, interviewed the owners, board of directors, spent time with the management, stayed in all our properties — really just to get a sense of who we were as a company,” he says.
A frequently-used motto within the company had been ‘casual luxury, heartfelt hospitality’, which now forms the basis of the JA Resorts and Hotels brand values. “We’ve produced a brand-standards manual which can be picked up and taken by anybody.
This is something we really didn’t have before – we had policies and procedures, but there were tweaks and changes to fit individual properties and nothing particularly hard and fast. People will walk into a property in the future and even if they don’t see the name on the door we hope they’ll say ‘we’re staying in a JA Resort’.
“The emphasis is very much on resorts as that is what we are and that will be the same going forward,” adds Thomson.
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