People power
Tasked with delivering this massive recruitment drive was director of human resources Yasmin Akhtar, who admits that there were numerous challenges to overcome.
Standards were high and needs specific, in order to meet JW Marriott brand values of authenticity, especially on the culinary side, as well as building a diverse front of house team to cater to Dubai’s international traveller.
Another challenge arose from the immigration laws in markets Marriott was trying to tap into, says Akhtar.
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“There have been changes in terms of exit requirements and many countries are now stating a minimum wage requirement. So before anyone could fly for example from Thailand they had to meet a minimum wage requirement, so that meant we needed to re-strategise.”
On the other hand, targeting the local Dubai market proved very successful, with an open recruitment day in June last year attracting 5500 job seekers.
“It gave us a good opportunity to evaluate what was out there in the market,” says Akhtar. “We shortlisted 700, of which about 50% of those were hired.”
“Our greatest success for recruitment actually came from online portals; other than Marriott we actually relied on online recruitment portals such as Catererglobal, Bayt.com and a small percentage of agencies.
I think roughly 10% of our associates came from agencies, which shows how powerful online portals are — more than 70% of our associates applied online,” says Akhtar.
The male to female ratio, meanwhile, is 75:25, while there are just eight Emiratis on board. Akhtar says one of the Emiratis on her team has been tasked with growing the percentage of nationals, while she has a personal goal to recruit more women.
“At Marriott we are a strong proponent for women in management. Right now it’s 25%, I’d like to see this number go to 40%. I’m the only lady on the executive committee; in my previous property [in Singapore] there was at least a 50% presence,” she says.
Stat attack
13km Height all the glasses in the hotel would reach if stacked on top of each other
3.5 million ft2 Space the hotel covers in total
55m2 Standard room
200,000 Pieces of flatware
4507 Pillows in Tower One’s 804 bedrooms
5100m2 Events space
247 Mirrors in La Farinebakery, because it is open 24/7
1326 Rainbow coloured bottles in The Lounge
The road ahead
The investment in people was all aimed at meeting the “key purpose and vision” of the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai, which was “really to add the convention dimension to the Dubai market scene”, says Queitsch.
The hotel has already made steps in the right direction — with the GM even potentially lining up groups for the notoriously quiet period of July and August — and he’s confident they will continue to grow this market, despite the typical rumbles of concerns about upcoming supply.
“Marriott has been in the convention business for many years; we have a convention network called Innovation. So we know a lot of the biggest buyers already. Sales equals relationships for me,” he says.
“You have to have a vision, you have to have a target, people always say ‘aren’t you worried about 12,000 rooms, 20,000 rooms coming up?’ It doesn’t really worry me that much because you have to know your target, you have to know your customer, and I always say you have to know how to fish in the right lake or the right sea.
There’s a lot of fishermen that go up and throw the thing out there and get a little tiny fish and they’re all disappointed. Or they get a big fish which they can’t take out because it’s too heavy. You have to know where you’re fishing, where your market is, where your positioning is and then you go after it. So I think there’s a purpose for everything. You’ve just got to go after that.”
The desire to prove themselves and excel in the market is a trait common to all the management Hotelier spoke with.
As Keffer recalls after New Year, “the hotel opened up in TripAdvisor at 66 out of 450 hotels in a hotel that sold out for its first time ever in the first 30 days”.
Now, their goal is to maintain this first-mover advantage. And while, Queitsch is the first to admit that they “are not perfect”, he can’t help but also drop into the conversation that he’s heard people refer to the hotel as a “game changer”. Perhaps we’ve been speaking to the same people, for when it comes to the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai, more than a few little birds have told Hotelier Middle East the same.
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