CEO INTERVIEW: HMH's Michel Noblet

Hospitality Management Holdings president, CEO and founding partner Michel Noblet looks back on his five decades in the industry and reveals why it is the unpredictability of life as a hotelier that makes him so passionate about the hospitality business

One of the Middle East’s most respected hoteliers, president, CEO and founding partner of Hospitality Management Holdings (HMH), Michel Pierre Jean Noblet was destined for a life in the hospitality industry.

Born in the south west of France soon after World War II, in 1946, Noblet grew up immersed in the business at his parents’ hotel, the 25-room Bordeaux Hotel in Saint Gardens.

Instinctively passionate about “entertaining and making people feel good”, Noblet started working in hotels at the end of the school day when he was just 16, motivated by dreams of travelling the world.

He enrolled at Lycee Hotelier Toulouse, where he received “excellent marks”, but was more concerned with satisfying his hunger for the job with hands-on roles.

His goal was to learn every aspect of the industry, to develop his knowledge and challenge himself. Fast forward 50 years, and aged 66, Noblet is celebrating his 50th year as a hotelier. Or, as he prefers to put it, “50 years of vacation”.

To reflect on the past five decades, we met at Coral Boutique Hotel Apartments in Al Barsha Dubai, part of the Coral Hotels & Resorts brand Noblet launched with the help of HE Sheikh Faisal bin Sultan Al Qassimi and HE Sheikh Mohammed bin Faisal Al Qassimi in 2003.

This came following a 30-year career with Le Méridien that saw Noblet open 55 hotels across the world. The Coral brand was the first alcohol-free hotel concept in the Middle East and its success paved the way for three more brands: Corp Executive Hotels, ECOS Hotels and EWA Hotels. There are now 30 operating hotels under the HMH umbrella and 20 in the pipeline, with plans to target Asian expansion.

Noblet’s journey through the industry shows no signs of slowing. Still, he managed to take a pause to sit down with Hotelier and consider the changing shape of the hospitality industry over the past 50 years.

Like many of his peers, as he recalls his early ambition, Noblet acknowledges a distinct shift in the nature of young hoteliers today.

“My aim was to go from one place to another one,” reminisces Noblet, who moved to Paris for his first internship and then London, making historic hotels such as Eiffel Tower, Cafe de la Paix in the French capital and Rubens Hotel on Buckingham Palace Road, his training ground. “The more I travel, the more I want to travel,” he asserts — the reason HE Sheikh Faisal bin Sultan Al Qassimi has nicknamed Noblet “Ibn Battuta”.

But, he acknowledges that this drive comes with a cost, too: “To develop yourself in the most efficient way you have to make some sacrifice — to be far from home,” says Noblet.

“Funnily enough, it was the same for my dear colleagues who have the same position as me today —they were not looking for the money, they were looking for the experience. I was hungry for the job, to learn reception; to learn administration; to learn sales and marketing — if you want to manage, you need to know the job yourself.

How can you give some instruction to an executive chef if you don’t know the job? At least you need to know the basics, you don’t pretend to know better, but you know the basics. At the time that was fundamental,” says Noblet.

“People going into hospitality were enjoying, not counting, their time. It was like a ritual where the motivation was clearly different. People were more hungry for the job. Today a lot of people are there because they have no other option so for them it is only a task.”

The result today is that, while there are more specialists in areas such as sales and marketing, there are less hotel “generalists”.

“To be a generalist takes a lot of time and effort, so today the tendency is a little bit different,” observes Noblet. He believes, therefore, that those likely to be most successful will be those that are most passionate.

“You need to have it in the blood, you have to be born in it. You have to express yourself with a passion, you have to understand that you are in hospitality and that [means] to welcome people and understand the guest experience.”

This is particularly important when it comes to hotel managers, says Noblet.

“A manager has to be popular, believe me when I was general manager I had a lot of friends, a lot of satisfaction, I felt no fear. Because I was so excited, I wanted to position my hotel in the marketplace — I wanted to have fun, I wanted people feeling good, I wanted to be recognised, I wanted to do something for the children, for the families.

A hotel is not just a matter of serving tea and coffee. It is a matter obviously of offering the very best product possible, but at the same time what is important is to instil life — the smile, the uniform, the grooming, the makeup — we are in the show business. The manager is like an artist — he is a magician, he has to make the place very unique so people say ‘we are going to that place so I feel recognised’”, says Noblet.

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Closing the GAP
But in a world where it is increasingly difficult to find those people willing and eager to go the extra mile, how does Noblet pass this message onto his team today? He says it’s down to “non-stop coaching” and ensuring there is no gap between his head office and his hotels.

He is also of the mindset that ultimately, it is the general manager who is responsible for the asset he or she runs.

“This asset has to be well positioned in the marketplace, successful, dynamic, with a good image, good product, good standard and good service, and more importantly, profitable. But you can only do this if you have the right GM, the right people, the right training, the right induction, the right evaluation, so it’s a combination of all things, but the manager has to be a guy who is excited by the job.

“For me, if the bottom line is not correct, it doesn’t match the expectation of the operator and the owner, then there is something wrong definitely at the top.”

Ultimately, at HMH, Noblet has 30 different owners to please and 30 relationships to balance and maintain. So what made him, after such a long and consistent career with Le Méridien, go it alone and set up HMH with his partners and friends, the Al Qassimi family?

“I’m an entrepreneur, a man of action, so after Le Méridien I had to continue, life goes on, the journey goes on. If I want to reach 50 years I have to do some work!”

A Blank Page
The move was bold, but not easy, he admits, with a great deal of adjustment necessary, not to mention the challenge of making sure people “know” your new hotels. The most important factors were behind the scenes — mastering technology and developing a powerful central reservation system.

“Our goal was not to build the greatest hotel of all times, but simply to create an experience that offers something different from the status quo. And this became the guiding force for the group that quickly became synonymous with exceptional service, respect for local traditions and harbinger of innovation,” says Noblet.

Throughout this process, his approach remained as it has always been throughout his career: “Literally, every day I start my life with a blank piece of paper,” says Noblet, withdrawing a sheet of white A4 from his blazer pocket and unfolding it — the air of the aforementioned magician about him.

“When I start my day, I do not know how it would end. And that’s the beauty of our business. It’s just so unpredictable. You have a surprise waiting for you at every step,” reveals Noblet.

“You need to re-engineer yourself not from time to time, but every day. Don’t forget the blank page. Every day I start with this blank page,” he says. “It means that every day you need to find ideas, to find something that will be [unique] in the marketplace.”

This philosophy has ensured Noblet remains the humble hotelier he was when he started out helping his parents.

“For the time being it would be very pretentious to say I am going to do this and that,” he says. “I must say that my focus is to consolidate. It is not fair to say I am going to have 100 hotels — this is ridiculous.

So what we are looking for today is to deliver the very best in terms of service quality, standard and procedure and to make our partners satisfied.”

The 20-strong pipeline no doubt reflects the fact that Noblet has established HMH as a company that is both respected and trusted, but as he says, this is not the end: “The journey goes on, my 50 years of vacation is still on”.

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Pipeline hotels: 20 in the Middle East

Recent openings: 10 hotels opened in the past 12 months, including Coral Hotel Dhahran, Coral Hotel Jubail, Coral Hotel Aden, Coral Martini Aleppo, EWA Deira Dubai, EWA Suites Ajman, Corp Executive Al Khoory Hotel, Coral Boutique Baghdad, EWA Mahda – Oman.

Recent signings: 14 new projects were signed in the past 12 months. Out of these three are in Iraq, four in Africa, three in UAE and four in Saudi Arabia.

Expected openings by 2013: 16 to 20 new hotels including Coral Niyala – Sudan, Corp Executive Hotel Amman, The Ajman Palace By HMH, EWA Port Sudan, EWA Nile Tower – Khartoum, Coral International Sports City – Dubai, Coral Qurum – Oman, as well as some exciting new projects in Saudi Arabia, Dubai and Iraq.

Career Highlights
September 2003 – Present: President & CEO and founding partner, HMH – Hospitality Management Holdings.

May 1999 – November 2001: Managing director (Middle East & West Asia), Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

September 1997 – April 1999: Managing director (Asia, Pacific & Australia), Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

January 1996 – September 1997: Senior vice president (Asia Pacific, Australia), Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

January 1992 – January 1996: Vice president (Middle East), Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

May 1971 – December 1991: General manager (posted in different hotels around the world), Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts.

1962 – 1971: Worked with brands such as Eiffel Tower, Café de la Paix, Beaulieu sur Mer, Rubens Hotel, Grand Hotel. Education: 1. Graduated from Lycee Hotelier Toulouse 2. Ecole Superieur de Paris (ESCP) 3. Hotel Marketing and Operations, Cornell University, New York, USA 4. Leadership and Motivation, Cornell University, New York, USA 5. Commercial Management, Institut International Meridien, France