CEO Interview: Viceroy's Bill Walshe
Viceroy Hotel Group CEO Bill Walshe considers himself lucky; having started his career in small Irish guesthouses he now heads up the luxury Californian brand Viceroy, which he’s set to take global. Here, Walshe reveals his inspirations, vision and why sometimes, 51% is enough
Bill Walshe is a familiar face to Dubai hoteliers, having previously worked as Jumeirah Group’s chief marketing officer. He is the man responsible for putting Tiger Woods on the helipad of the Burj Al Arab, and he now jokes that it was this or send “55 press releases.”
What the stunt taught him, however, was that it’s better “to do a few things really big and really brilliantly”, and now, he’s again ensuring his company is in the limelight with a staring role as a judge on The Job, a CBS reality show that will see Walshe hire the spa manager for Viceroy Miami.
It’s little wonder that Walshe’s secret is the fact he “put himself through college doing commercial radio and stand-up”.
When we meet in Dubai, Walshe’s excitement both at being back here, and at how far he’s come, is palpable. Having begun his career, by accident, as the bin boy at his uncle’s guest house in Limerick, Ireland, Walshe became hooked on the industry he now “adores”.
To be appointed the chief executive officer of Viceroy Hotel Group on July 1, 2012, and move to LA was “really a dream come true,” says Walshe.
“As a young kid in Limerick who started out washing cutlery and now my zip code is 90210 — that’s pretty cool. It might sound really arrogant and cheesy, but I kind of think I’m loving it, I’m living the dream and every day just gets better and better.”
It’s clear Walshe relishes his new role and the opportunity ahead for the group. He talks nineteen to the dozen about his priorities for the company — the success of which he acknowledges is reliant on him achieving “complete alignment” and understanding of his vision across the organisation.
Ultimately, his goal is to ensure Viceroy has the infrastructure in place to deliver its brand values of “consistent individuality” and “commitment to authenticity” as it enters a new era of growth beyond its traditional North American roots.
“If you look back over my career what is a constant feature is I like to work for companies at an early stage of evolution,” says Walshe, referring to his earlier roles at Kempinski and Jumeirah, then at Dublin’s Doyle Group, which was “fundamentally and utterly repositioned” under his leadership.
“Taking over the Yas Viceroy hotel and then opening up the Viceroy Maldives has really been game changing for the company in many ways; it’s put us on an international stage,” says Walshe.
“What it has taught us is that we need to have an organisational structure that allows for real time decision making and to ensure that we have talent in market for market. We can’t run the world from LA.”
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Viceroy vision
Walshe’s vision is for Viceroy to be confident and courageous in its delivery of authentic hotels. This is essential to ensure its success as an operator of fairly individual properties in one portfolio, says Walshe, comparing the 500-room Viceroy Yas Abu Dhabi to the boutique Viceroy Maldives as an example.
“I like to say that we’re the only hotel company I know that is building its future based on an oxymoron and that is consistent individuality. You might think that one suffocates the other but I believe that there’s a balance we can strike,” asserts Walshe.
“We’ve got the confidence to compete but we’ve got the courage to populate our portfolio with very different types of products.”
The goal is for guests to be more concerned about the location they are staying in than the Viceroy name.
“Viceroy comes third or fourth on the list, I don’t care, because what we’re in the business of doing is creating an emotional connection for our guest to the location that they’re in —to create the opportunity for them to generate life long memories, but memories of them not of us,” he says.
Achieving this goes back to getting the afore-mentioned talent in place first, however, with Walshe using the group’s smaller Urban Retreats brand as an “incubator” for future leaders of upcoming Viceroy hotels.
“No hotel company I ever run will give people a script as to what they say to a guest. What we do is recruit people with personality.”
In this, he is inspired by US restaurateur Danny Meyer, who runs his businesses around the concept of “51 percenters”. Walshe explains: “We all say we need to recruit people that give 110%, that’s like looking for a 26-hour day, it can’t happen, so he talks about the 51 percenters where the dominant connection they have to the business is emotional not technical.”
At Viceroy, Walshe says people at every level are encouraged “to express who they are” as long as they meet the service expectation of their guests.
“I have no respect for unnecessary hierarchy whatsoever. If I could run an entirely flat organisation I would do but we can’t because decisions need to be made,” observes Walshe.
“The company isn’t growing based solely on a board of directors or me creating the future, my role is really to be a catalyst for co-creation. My two most important stakeholder groups, my customers and my colleagues, have equal voice in where the company is going and then we collaborate.
You know what, we get it wrong sometimes but we celebrate efforts as much as we do results and it’s actually OK to get it wrong. That means were trying,” he says.
Walshe acknowledges that it is the relatively small size of the company that makes this philosophy possible, however, even if the pipeline was to double in the next three to five years, that would result in 30-40 hotels — meaning the approach is sustainable.
But don’t be mislead; Viceroy might not be a Marriott or an IHG, and nor would it want to be, says Walshe, but its growth targets are also “very, very ambitious”, with expansion to Asia coming next, plus aspirations for a Viceroy Dubai “in the not too distant future”.
It seems highly likely that this is one hotelier we may be seeing some more of in this region — if he can tear himself away from his dream life in LA that is.
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Viceroy’s expansion plan
Viceroy Hotel Group has a portfolio of 15 hotels, predominately in North America, Mexico and the Caribbean, but the group is now expanding internationally with projects in UAE, Turkey and Maldives.
The next stop will be Asia, with Walshe promising an announcement very soon, and operations are set to start on “another continent” as well.
Viceroy Yas Abu Dhabi
Taken over by Viceroy in August 2011, Walshe describes this hotel as a “really modern architectural wonder”. It has 500 rooms and a large conference space and famously hosts the Abu Dhabi F1 Grand Prix.
Viceroy Maldives
Located on its own island, this 60-key sanctuary is described by Walshe as “a contemporary interpretation of what we know there are customers out there who would love the Maldives to reflect”. With many two-bed and loft villas, “it plays to the modern family”.
Viceroy Istanbul
The first foot into Turkey will open in Q1 2014 and comprise 69 keys spread between 12 different buildings in this former monastery. Walshe says: “I signed off the designs for Istanbul a couple of weeks ago and it’s just beautiful; it maintains the heritage of the buildings that we’re privileged to bring back to life but again interprets them in a very relevant way. It’s just completely unlike anything else that we’ve done”.
Viceroy New York
This will open in September this year on 57th Street. “We’re having great fun with that because what we’re bringing to market is a hotel that looks and feels downtown but it’s on 57th Street,” comments Walshe. “It’s got the edginess of the downtown experience with the sophistication of its uptown counterparts — that whole sense of contradiction and positive disruption is something that I adore”.
Hotel Zetta, San Francisco
This is an Urban Retreat, a property of “really quite distinct personality” that doesn’t fit into the Viceroy brand mould, explains Walshe. There are four to date, with Hotel Zetta opening on February 18. Walshe launched the hotel with a flash mob pillow fight at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco to attract the “cool tech” audience the hotel will appeal to.