One day, Offe would like to embark on his own F&B venture, hand-in-hand with his son and daughter. One day, Offe would like to embark on his own F&B venture, hand-in-hand with his son and daughter.

Future Goals
Offe is prepared to be patient, however, saying he expects it to be another couple of years before Fairmont has the influence on F&B globally that he wants.

Currently, the focus is on developing F&B concepts in-house, using Fairmont talent rather than consultants as has historically been the case.

“We are now doing quite a few [new concepts] particularly in North America – 15 restaurants under renovation, plus new hotels. 2015 is really the date I have set to see the new generation of activities with Fairmont.

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It will take 12-18 months to develop the concepts and by the time you have 15-20 new restaurants then you start to make an impact on the market. At the moment it’s not enough to make noise,” he says.

Making this impact forms the focus of Offe’s future ambitions. “The first thing I have to fulfil is to make sure Fairmont is successful — that’s an obligation. I’ve given myself a few years to do that because we have a lot of opportunities and we have the right people.

I’m very happy to see passionate young talent in the hotels – they just need to be guided and inspired. That should be my role I believe. Fairmont has the potential to develop the new generation of leaders and that’s what I want to do.

I will take care of the leaders of today of course because this is critical, but the success will come from tomorrow. And tomorrow we have to put it in place today. If I’m able to do that in the next 18 months then tomorrow will be very successful”.

After that, Offe says he may turn his attention to his own project. “When this is done, my daughter and my son are in the business and they always said ‘why don’t we open our own business, the three of us?’ That’s something which also has the potential in the future for them.

I would love to do something the three of us and that would be most probably in Hong Kong,” he reveals.

As to what this concept will be though, it remains mysterious; for following trends is not something Offe is known for.

“My view is if there is a trend you should do the opposite because if you follow the trend, everybody’s going to do the same,” he laughs.

“It’s like benchmarking — if you all benchmark the same thing, how can you be different?”

Should this project come to fruition, one can’t help but thinking Offe will be king of his castle once again.