Rooms include sofa-beds making it easy for families to share the rooms. Rooms include sofa-beds making it easy for families to share the rooms.

Building the brand
The new brand standards centre on the company’s “casual luxury, heartfelt hospitality” motto, chief operating officer David Thomson told Hotelier upon the brand’s relaunch in October: “We’ve produced a brand-standards manual which can be picked up and taken by anybody.

“The rebranding has been applied to everything from staff uniforms and facilities to colour schemes and in-room amenities,” Thomson said at the time.

“But it’s not just the visuals contributing to the new experience of JA Resorts & Hotels, the group has created a new spa concept ‘Calm’, as well as the introduction of ‘Your Space’ lounges to all of its properties.”

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The room count stands at 338 keys, comprising 26 suites, 20 one-bedroom suites and six junior suites.

“We’ve adjusted the number of rooms slightly as four rooms have been made ‘Your Space’ rooms, available complimentary for any early arrivals or late departures,” explains Harley-Fleming.

Director of sales and marketing Radosevic says reducing the number of rooms to accommodate Your Space negatively affects revenue only “in a small way”.

“But it creates loyalty and a wonderful experience in all our properties, so we’re positive long term it will create more revenue for us,” she adds.

Furthermore, each hotel will offer an ‘experience' desk’ manned by a dedicated ‘experience manager’ — a new role created under the rebrand.

“Our host will book everything from a dinner reservation to a safari. The arrival process will be the same across the company and we’ve enhanced certain parts of it.

In the lobby we’ve created some nice lighting effects so in the day it will be a nice cool blue, with flowers on tables, and in the evening we’ll have in excess of 50 candles in the lobby, and the walls in the lobby will change colour,” reveals Harley-Fleming.

Overall the team describes Ocean View Hotel as a family-friendly property, which is perhaps the most apparent attribute of its four-star positioning.

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