The 38 residences are popular among the GCC market. The 38 residences are popular among the GCC market.

Evolution and innovation
Schupbach’s final piece of advice for the new Palm GMs — who he says already meet regularly to discuss the idiosyncrasies of operating away from the mainland — is to have a long-term strategy, analyse performance quarterly and be willing to make changes and additions as the market requires.

“We have a five-year plan,” he asserts. “We evaluate quarterly, annually, what performs well, what is accepted well, our customer feedback in the market. We’re building a children’s club outside; we know we had limited family attractions within the resort and I think that was needed, so we are bringing a nice waterpark with slides and all that, so that should be operational by the end of this year”

The aim is to better cater to the hotel’s family guests, even though this isn’t its core market.

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“Some hotels want 80% families, I always said from the beginning we don’t want to have that much family but you do need families and you need to see how you can compete and with whom you can compete.

We will never be able to compete with an Atlantis or Madinat Jumeirah because they have their own huge waterparks or whatever else, but we have something small where we can park the children and say ‘have a good day and you as an adult enjoy your day spent at the resort’.”

He adds that it won’t just benefit guests but will also attract residents to use the hotel’s facilities, such as brunch or the spa, while they enrol their children in the club.

Schupbach is also looking at changing some of the room configurations in order to give more space to families that perhaps don’t want to pay for two rooms but still bring small children.

“Not every family can afford to have two rooms or a connecting room so how can we get a better experience if we have a family of four staying in just one room? An option would be to have actually a sofa bed built in so rather than adding an extra piece to the existing furniture, like a roll away bed, simply have a master bed for the adults and then you have a sofa which just pulls out, which is not uncommon but we don’t have that here today.

[We’re looking at] bigger rooms; we have landscaping on the roofs, which is quite nice but it’s not really used so we could create some garden suites, which is new and different, so we have engaged with some companies and are looking at the entire infrastructure and building, the opportunities.

“The plan is to do model rooms next year and then apply some changes in the years 2015 and 2016 to our current model, but you have to start planning now, so that’s the key,” asserts Schupbach.

Stat attack
- 115,931m² Size of resort
- 405 Rooms, including 42 suites
- 94% Occupancy June 2013 year-to-date
- 700,000 Annual footfall into F&B outlets
- 2016 Changes to be implemented to room model
- 38 Residences, all booked out during our visit in June
- 70 Areas and treatment rooms at Talise Spa